A Leap of Faith
The year 1953 marked an important milestone, in Kurien's personal life as much as in the history of Kaira Cooperative. On his return from New Zealand in April 1953, Kurien disembarked at Bombay, where he spent a few days. One night, he attended a dinner given by the YMCA to honour his maternal uncle, Dr Thomas Yakhub.
At the dinner he met a prominent businessman and social worker, K M Philip, of the wealthy family that owned Malayala Manorama, Kerala's most widely read and influential daily. Philip's wife had a younger sister, Susan Peter, fair, comely with unusual grey eyes and light brown hair. Her father and Kurien's had been friends, although Molly (as she in known to most of her acquaintances) and Kurien had never met. Kurien's mother had been trying for some time to get her son suitably married. He finally accepted his mother's suggestion that he go to Trichur and meet Molly Peter. They met for the first time on May 28, 1953, were married on June 15, at 10 in the morning, and caught the 4 o'clock train to Bombay enroute to Anand. Molly Kurien learned very early that her husband's life revolved around his work in Anand.
But to return to the history of Amul, in 1953 a proposal came from Unicef to the Government of Bombay. For years, Unicef had been distributing free milk powder in underdeveloped nations, but it was of no advantage to the recipients in continued dependence on this aid unless it helped the nation to develop some industry of its own. Unicef offered a donation to the Bombay government, which would include milk drying equipment worth Rs 8 lakhs, in return for which the government would bind itself to distribute, through the BMS and Kaira Cooperative, Rs 12 lakh worth of free milk to undernourished, children of Kaira.
Image: Amul Dairy, Anand
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