Part 11 of my life in Wadi

I am extremely happy that atleast some people for whom this blog is meant are reading it and commenting. I acknowledge Gomathy and her niece Deepa for their continuous support. Here I would like to request you all to send me any old photographs you may have of Wadi and its people in the 60s and the 70s so that they can form part of the blog. I learn that Geeta Menon is not with Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, but with Mahatma Gandhi University, God bless her. For Deepa, I will include a separate post, at a later date, on what I understand to be the philosophy of Hinduism.

Having said that, we now move to 6th Standard. In 6th Standard, we had a new teacher Lakshmi Pathy. I should now tell you a little about Lakshmi Pathy. Her ancestry is linked to mine, from somewhere in 19th Century Kerala. There is, in the central Kerala district of Ernakulam, a village called Koovappady. Koovappady, when I visited it in 2003 was a well developed locality. But it was 19th or probably 18th Century Koovappady that was a part of my ancestry. Towards the end of 19th Century, there was a family in this place of which Venkatachala Vadhyaar was the head. The Family stayed in a house called the Puthan Madhom (or was it Vadakke Puthan Madhom). Houses in which Kerala Iyers stayed in Kerala were called Madhom, to distinguish them from Manas in which Namboodiri Brahmins lived and Veedus in which Nairs lived. http://www.keralaiyers.com/history/ is a good site to learn about this vibrant community. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iyer is also a good link. I strongly recommend anyone who stumbles across this blog, to read a little about the Palakkad Iyer community, of which I am a part. I assure you, it will be a pleasurable experience. I understand I belong to the Ashtasahasram branch of the Kerala Iyer community. Anyway, Venkitachala Vaadhyaar married Sankari Ammal and they had sixteen children. My grandmother Thangi was one of them, and that makes Venkitachala Iyer and Sankari Ammal my pater-maternal great grandparents. The eldest son was Easwara Iyer. The other brothers, as far as I remember are Subrahmania Iyer (Manian Vaadhyaaar), Harihara Iyer, Sadasivam, Rama Iyer, Krishna Iyer(Kuttappan), and the girls were Chellammal, Naani, Raasam, Thangam and Lakshmi. I know that makes up only eleven. I am sorry I don't remember the other names.

Were I to describe this family in detail, this blog will run out of space, and also it will deviate from its purpose of gloryfying Wadi, so I talk of it in brief in this post. This post may therefore be treated as a prelude to my relationship with Lakshmy Pathy, my teacher in Class 6th.

Easwara Iyer died young. Manaian Vadhyaar became the head of the Family early, soon after Venkitachala Vaadhyaar passed away, Harihara Iyer went to Bombay and took up a job in ACC, and got most of the young Iyer men, including his brother Sadasivam of Koovappady into the rolls of ACC (that's how my father got in), Rama Iyer, suffered from a bout of TB, was cured in a sanatorium in Madanapalle in Andhra Pradesh and subsequentlymarried one Raaji and went and settled down in Karol Bagh in Delhi. Kuttappan Vaadhyaar stayed back in Koovappady as a Vadhyaar. You may have noticed that I use terms Iyer and Vaadhyaar alternatively. Iyers, who are priests, are called Vaadhyaars. This house was therefore called Vadhyaar Aam (meaning the house of Vaadhyaars or priests). Of the daughters, Chellammal and my Grandmother Thangam were widowed very early, Lakshmi lived a full life with Parameswara Iyer, a bhagavathar, or carnatic classical vocalist in Secunderabad, Naani with Sambasiva Iyer of Vaikom and Raasam with Raasa of Koovappady. One of the sons of Naani (her real name was Naarayani) was Sivavenkatachalapathy or S V Pathy, who was one of the guys Harihara Iyer brought into ACC. S V Pathy eventually married Ganga and they had five children, Lakshmi, Sasi, Usha, Uma and Lallu. So now you know where Lakshmi Pathy came from.