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SHUBHAM_DABHIRKAR
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On the barren terrain of India’s Deccan Plateau, several days journey south of the Ganges Plain where the Lord Buddha walked the earth and awakened mankind, rich veins of gold run deep through the land. Antiquity records the mining of gold in the folds of these winds swept plains. Over the millennia, kingdoms flourished and kingdoms perished in rhythm with the fortunes of those seeking this precious metal. Half a millennium ago the last of these kingdoms fell into ruin and vanished. Its name was Kolar. With the fall of the kingdom, Kolar became a barren and thorny plateau where gusty winds blew unchecked, and the land remained rocky, arid, and uninhabited. Then, in 1873, an adventurous British soldier leased the land from the Maharaja of Mysore and began digging. The earth refused to relinquish its treasure so easily. For several years, he dug in vain, until the famous John Taylor and Company from Great Britain was brought in to supervise the project. The enterprise finally struck gold in 1880 at an outpost called Oorgaum. By 1883, four mine shafts were operating full time, and the Kolar landscape changed rapidly. Colonial bungalows with colorful gardens, club-houses, hospitals, schools and long rows of huts for the laborers
mushroomed up from the plains. Mine shafts began to dot the landscape as more and more veins were struck. It was there, forty years later, in the gold fields of India’s Mysore state that the life of Peter John Morgan began. He was born at 7:45 am
on October 19, 1925 at Oorgaum, Kolar Gold Fields, the site of the first mine shaft excavated by British engineers. The time and place of his birth would be significant to the trajectory of his life. His father, John Morgan, was the son of an Anglican vicar who grew up in Llanelli, Wales, and began working in the local mines just as World War I erupted. Fortunately, John Morgan was sent to Mesopotamia and the Suez Canal Zone, avoiding the fate of most young officers who ended up in the trenches of Europe.