The Many Journeys of Kitty Boomla

Kitty Menon’s maiden name was Ketayun Boomla. She was named after a princess called Ketayun (abbreviated to ‘Kitty’). And the prosperous, highlyAnglicised, Parsi family in which she was brought up, together with her stunning good looks, made this naming after a fairy-tale princess proverbially apposite in her case. The family had a branch in England, in Slough near London, where one of her brothers settled permanently. Indeed when I first went to England for higher studies, with no more than three pounds in my pocket (the maximum allowed, in those days of exchange control, to holders of what was called the ‘P-Form’), Kitty, whom I had briefly known in my undergraduate days through a teacher of mine, had given me her brother’s telephone number and address, in case I had any difficulty.