It is a pleasure to congratulate Sanjeev Panackal Thomas, an engineer, business leader, entrepreneur, author and artist whose remarkable journey reflects resilience, reinvention, leadership and an enduring commitment to creativity.
His book, Half-Footed Hero: A Tale of a Lovedale Boy (1971–1979), is perhaps one of his most personal expressions. More than a memoir of school life, it is a thoughtful return to the experiences, relationships, struggles and seemingly ordinary moments that quietly shaped the person he eventually became.
Some schools simply educate their students.
Others become an inseparable part of their identity.
For Sanjeev, The Lawrence School, Lovedale, was the latter.
In 1971, a young boy from Kerala arrived at Lovedale. What followed over the next eight years would become far more than an education. Against the misty fields and hills of one of India’s iconic boarding schools, he encountered friendship and rivalry, discipline and rebellion, achievement and humiliation, confidence and uncertainty.
Half-Footed Hero returns to those formative years decades later.
But Sanjeev does not romanticise the past simply for the sake of nostalgia.
Instead, he revisits it with affection, humour and honesty.
He meets again the awkward boy, the outsider, the athlete, the friend, the rebel and the dreamer he once was. He examines moments when that boy succeeded and moments when he stumbled, slowly recognising that growing up rarely happens on a perfectly level playing field.
That idea gives the title Half-Footed Hero its distinctive meaning.
It represents courage without certainty.
Resilience without guarantees.
And the effort to find balance even when one feels that both feet are not firmly planted on the ground.
The memoir therefore becomes much larger than a story about boarding-school life.
It is about becoming.
It is about friendships capable of surviving decades, failures that unexpectedly become teachers, institutions that continue to influence us long after we have left them, and childhood experiences whose significance may only become clear years later.
Sanjeev’s own life after Lovedale gives those reflections an extraordinary additional dimension.
A merit scholar and former Head Boy of The Lawrence School, Lovedale, he went on to earn a BTech in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA. His professional journey subsequently took him into senior leadership positions in India, Europe and the United States.
He headed companies, served as Chairman of the CII Kerala South Zone and received recognition for his contribution to industry and society, including an ASSOCHAM award presented by Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and a National CSR Award.
Yet one of the most interesting chapters in his life came when many people might have chosen stability.
At the age of 58, Sanjeev reinvented himself again.
He stepped into entrepreneurship and founded Narmada Kaolin Pvt. Ltd., driven by a vision of using technology and innovation to create value from India’s mineral resources.
That decision says something important about the philosophy underlying Half-Footed Hero.
Becoming does not stop when childhood ends.
Neither does reinvention.
A life can continually evolve.
And despite decades spent in engineering, industry and leadership, Sanjeev’s creative identity remained equally important.
He has published books, held solo art exhibitions and continued using both writing and painting as ways of examining people, memory and the human experience.
In Half-Footed Hero, these worlds converge.
The businessman looks back at the boy.
The artist observes memory.
The writer gives those memories language.
And the adult begins to understand experiences that the child could never fully comprehend.
Perhaps that is what makes the book especially meaningful.
It is not written merely to document what happened at Lovedale.
It attempts to understand why those years continued to matter.
As the story moves beyond the school gates, the reader discovers the extraordinary distance travelled by the young boy introduced at the beginning of the memoir.
The journey eventually includes leadership, enterprise, creativity and even a moment standing in a room with the Prime Minister of India.
Yet that moment is not treated as the final destination.
Instead, it becomes an almost improbable response to the deeper question running beneath the entire memoir:
What can become of a boy who once felt he was standing on only half a foot?
The answer is not simply found in professional accomplishments or recognition.
It lies in the journey itself.
In continuing after failure.
In remembering friendships.
In accepting imperfections.
In finding humour in difficult memories.
In reinventing oneself.
And in eventually understanding that some of the experiences we once believed were holding us back may actually have been preparing us for what came next.
Half-Footed Hero is therefore not simply Sanjeev Panackal Thomas’s story.
It invites readers to think about their own.
Who were we before the world taught us who we were supposed to become?
Which friendships changed us?
Which failures shaped us?
Which places continue to live within us long after we have left them?
And how differently might we understand the child we once were if we could meet them today?
Through this honest and reflective memoir, Sanjeev gives readers an opportunity to ask those questions for themselves.
We congratulate Sanjeev Panackal Thomas on Half-Footed Hero and on a life that beautifully demonstrates the power of resilience, curiosity, creativity and reinvention.
From the classrooms and playing fields of Lovedale to corporate boardrooms, entrepreneurship, art and literature, his journey reminds us that the most meaningful stories are often not simply about where we arrive.
They are about everything that shaped us along the way.
Congratulations, Sanjeev Panackal Thomas, on this deeply personal and memorable literary journey.
Featured Book
Half-Footed Hero: A Tale of a Lovedale Boy (1971–1979)
Author: Sanjeev Panackal Thomas
Available on Amazon:
https://amzn.in/d/08oOwk8O