The ancestry of Radha

Pachainayagi, known popularly as Pacha Paatti (Paatti meaning grandmother) was married to Ramaswami Iyer of Moovattupuzha. They had no children for a long time and the couple had been visiting several temples in the quest of a son. They had finally done a divine deal with Ramanatha Swamy of Rameshwaram in coastal Tamil Nadu that they would visit His temple and pay obeisance to the Lord, when Pachainayagi became pregnant with her first son. So delighted was Ramaswami Iyer with this development that, without waiting for the child to be delivered, he heeded the call of the spiritual and embarked on a pilgrimage to Rameshwaram. He was not destined to return, and his first and only son Sreemoolanathan was born in the first decade of the 20th century in a small mud hut in Moovattupuzha. News of Ramaswami Iyer’s death soon followed and Pachainayagi adopted the costume and way of life of a traditional south Indian Brahmin widow. As with Thangam, whom we talked about in the earlier post, Pachai Paatti learned early to fend for herself and tend her son. But unlike Thangam she did not opt to go back to her parents’ house. Instead she settled down in Moovattupuzha and built for herself and her son a house. She also learnt several skills like rudimentary ayurveda and the method of bringing down jaundice and such other diseases and poisons on account of insect and reptile bites by means of prayers etc. Being a chaste widow with such powers, she was much sought after and was respected in the community. Ramaswami Iyer’s brother whom we only knew as Kunju Patta lived in another house alongside. The house that Pachai Paatti built had five small rooms with mud walls and tiled roofs on the bank of the river Moovattupuzha in central Kerala. She lived in one and the others, she rented out to people. Mother and son lived with the income they got from renting the other four rooms. Since it was ahouse that had five rooms, it was called Anchu Muri Madhom or the five roomed house, located in the Kavumpady locality of Moovattupuzha. During those times the Kavumpady area was a locality occupied exclusively by Iyers like the Koovappady village. The area was called Kavumpady because it adjoined the Puzha Kara Kavu, a temple dedicated to Goddess Bhagawati on the river bank.

Young Sreemoolanathan was called Raman by his mother in gratitude to Lord Ramanatha Swami of Rameshwaram. He was adequately educated and set up a small grocery shop in on of the rooms of Anchu Muri Madhom. When the time to get married came, Sreemoolanathan married Seethalakshmi of Moncombu village in the Alappuzha District in southern Kerala. Seethalakshmi belonged to a well to do family of Kuttanad. Her father was a Licentiate Medical Practitioner or LMP which means he was authorized to practice allopathic medicine. So was her brother Moorthy. We understand her family owned a boat, which was a symbol of prestige in Kuttanad.

Seethalakshmi and Sreemoolanathan had seven children, two sons and five daughters. Ramaswamy or Ponnanna, the eldest, Rajammal or Raasam, Ananthalakshmi or Ammini, Annaporni or Annam, Radhammal, my mother, Balasubramaian or Baalan and Krishnambal. Radha was born on the 29th of December 1938 or on the Utrattadi day of the Malayalam month of Dhanu. Radha, with her six siblings therefore, lived a life full of her own people, unlike Thanga Mani who lived amidst a lot of people though they were not really his own. She did her schooling in the St. Augustine’s High School, a missionary school for girls. Education in the whole of Moovattupuzha, I believe now, is now the sole right of the Nirmala Institutions, but apparently it wasn’t so in those days when Radha was being educated. All the daughters of Sreemoolanathan studied in St. Augustine’s High School. Radha did her typewriting and shorthand courses after her matriculation and a course in Hindi, that is recognized as a graduate degree. She tutored some students in Hindi for sometime before she was married to Narayana Iyer or Thanga Mani of Koovappady on 6th June 1963.

PS Since I started this blog I have got in touch with 72 old friends of mine with whom I had lost touch. Out of this 20 were my classmates from MCC. I mailed or called up almost all of them. Some are overwhelmed; some remain in touch, some respond and lapse back into silence. The greatest contributors in locating these lost souls were Gomathy, Jayachandran, Datha and H S Murali. Deepa and Usha closely monitor the blog. Thanks to all of you once again.