Shenoi, a civil engineer and MBA, rose to the rank of Deputy Director-General of Works in the Indian Defence Service of Engineers. He has also been a member of HUDCO’s advisory board and of the planning team for Navi Mumbai. After retirement he has been helping NGOs in employment-oriented training, writing articles related to all aspects of housing, urban settlements, infrastructure, project and facility management and advising several companies on these issues. His email id is mpvshanoi@gmail.com.
I was born in Mysore, where I lived till I left the place after graduation in 1956, in search of a job. In 1947, the impact of the Partition of India was negligible in Mysore.
There people were more concerned about the fate of the State, their Maharajah in the new political set up.
The first exposure I had to the Partition that was accompanied by mass displacement of Hindus and Muslims, in which more than one million people were killed, was a small incident that happened in my uncle's residence. I was thirteen years old then. A refugee Hindu family had arrived in sleepy Mysore. They had made their way into the drawing room of my uncle's house, who was fairly affluent. He was also an inactive member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
