Constance, our fiercely independent grandmother.

The lady you see in this photograph is my grandmother. She was born as Constance Karuna Charles to an affluent family in Mysore state, southern India, in the in the late 1890s. Around 1910, when she may have been about 12, her marriage was arranged with a man named Durraswamy around 1910. Two years later at the age of 14 she was left widowed, with one baby son in her arms – Arthur.

The German garden designer of the Indian Subcontinent

During World War II, when the Dewan of Mysore, Mirza Ismail, appointed GHK as an architectural consultant to Mysore, Jaipur & Hyderabad, the British Residents in Mysore staged a huge protest. All Germans in India were declared enemies. Moreover, his letters show that he was quite vocal about his support for India’s independence. My English grandmother too, was labeled a traitor, because she had married a German.