[1][2] Born the eldest child of 9 siblings to a land owning family in India's old Madras Presidency, Namasivayam left his hometown at the age of 5 with his mother to join his father who was employed by the Central Electricity Board as a foreman-mechanic in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.

Resettling in his new home at the Board's accommodation quarters in Bangsa Road (present-day Petaling Jaya), 6-year-old Namasivayam briefly attended a private school in the Brickfields vicinity run by the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, he made the arduous journey southwards on foot and railway from Siam to Malaya, where he had an emotional reunion with his family who thought he had perished during the war.

He resumed his studies at Victoria Institution to complete his secondary education, where he also rediscovered his passion for art, depicting landscape scenes mainly with pencil and on occasions with watercolour.

In 1947, at the age of 21 he completed his Senior Cambridge examinations at the Institution.,[4] and sought employment with a French oil palm plantation company called Socfin, as a laboratory assistant.

[6] Namasivayam eventually received the Colombo Plan Scholarship award to study art, along with four other trainee teachers Inche Suri Bin Mohyani, Chew Fook Chun, Seah Teow Puan and Sim Tong Khern, and left for Sydney on 11 March 1957.