To celebrate
the centenary year of
Smt. SARASWATHI PATTABHI RAMAN,
THE C. P. RAMASWAMI AIYAR FOUNDATION
cordially invites you to a
Harikatha
by
Dr. PRAMEELA GURUMURTHY
(Head, Dept. of Music, University of Madras)
on
KANCHI KAMAKSHI
on Friday, November 12, 2010, at 6 p.m.
Dr. SAROJINI VARADAPPAN
(President, The C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation)
will preside
at THE C.P. RAMASWAMI AIYAR FOUNDATION
1 Eldams Road, Alwarpet, Chennai – 600 018
Please join us for tea at 6 p.m.
The Harikatha begins at 6.15 p.m.
Born to Dr. (Captain) P. Krishnaswami and Kanthammal, Saraswathi
married C.R. Pattabhi Raman, eldest son of Sir C.P. Ramaswami
Aiyar, in 1925.
Though educated at Bedford College, Cambridge, U.K., Saraswathi
Ammal was a charming combination of the old and the new. She
represented the best of Indian tradition. She always wore a nineyard
sari, with her diamond ear and nose rings, and a bulakku.
She was the personification of simplicity and a font of charity. No
request for help was unanswered and, at her death, a stream of
visually, hearing and physically challenged people who had been
helped by her came to cry over her dead body. She was a devout
Hindu who never missed her prayers, and an ardent devotee of
Kanchi Kamakshi. She became the family matriarch at the age of
18 on the passisng away of her mother-in-law, looking after the
properties at Madras, Kanchipuram, Damal and Ooty.
In 1967, following the death of Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar (in 1966),
Smt. Saraswathi and her husband Sri C.R. Pattabhi Raman gifted
the ancestral property – The Grove, Teynampet, Madras 18,
consisting of a 200 year old house and an acre of land – to the C.P.
Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation. This noble gesture was to have farreaching
effects. The Foundation is, today, a hub of activity in
Chennai – cultural, educational and environmental. The Foundation
educates financially handicapped children; those with autism,
dyslexia and learning disabilities; and rural women, tribals and
craftspeople straining to survive.
All this would not have been possible without the infrastructure
developed through the generous gift of Smt. Saraswathi and her
husband. The C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation salutes this great
woman and philanthropist.