Manuscript of a lost era

Last week was a very busy week for me as we were moving in to our new home and were packing up all our stuff to be shifted. I have always believed from my childhood that attic is one place in the house, where we actually have no clue over a period of time as to what we have been storing up there….. so I started my work on earlier Saturday morning to clean up the attic…. As usual and typical to many other houses, there was enough dust….
I began cleaning and started pulling out boxes to explore what was in there….
In one such box I got two photo frames one kept on the other and tightly sealed with a thick thread. I opened it to see that it was a photograph of my father and the other of my uncle… and between this photograph was a thick typewritten booklet sealed in a plastic sheet. I just opened to see what this book was all about …. As I opened to see it …
It was a travel log written by my elder grandfather on his trip around the world during 1945. I was so keen to finish that book then and there that I pushed my cleaning aside to open this book to read…
Just to let you know a little about him, his name was Dr. M B Ramachandra Rao, a
geo physicist by profession and was awarded the padma Bhushan for being an integral part for the discovery of oil in the Cambay alluvial tract. He was lovingly called “kaka “ and my elder grandmother was called “Ayi”. Kaka and ayi means, father and mother in marathi. They did not have children and hence my mother and all her siblings got their complete love and attention.It was one big joint family in the real sense.
He had written many books in his domain expertise. But this manuscript that I got is a raw log book, in which he has put in every granular detail of their journey ( kaka and ayi) around the world thru a ship “ MARINE ADDER” which they boarded on on 27th Jan 1947 till their written back to Guntalkal ( andrapradesh) on 2nd Jan 1948. Their meeting with different people, from the Governor to the refuges ripped by World war II , the places, the impression of India in the other world and how they were treated…. Their familiarization as the “Raos” just like the “Johns” and “Smiths” of the other world. The ship and the storm…. This has the most interesting information of places. I sincerely wonder how did this book land in my attic.....but i think there is a purpose to it and now I am keen to work on this manuscript …. You will hear on this shortly from me.