04/05/2026
** Remembering My Parents: A 90th Anniversary Tribute **
Today, May 4, 2026, marks a special and bittersweet day for our family. It is the 90th wedding anniversary of my parents and the 9th memorial day of my father.
We feel so lucky that they both lived such long, full lives. My father lived to be almost 100, and my mother to 92. We are especially grateful that they spent the last 12 years living with us here in the USA.
Both of them were such kind and hardworking people. They had so much love to give, not just to us, but to everyone they met. They also had a deep, lifelong respect for each other. My father stayed active until just a month before he passed away. He was taking care of our mother, reading, writing, chatting, watching TV, listening to music, playing keyboard, or helping out in the kitchen or garden.
I just remembered one of his writings from 2013. He wrote a beautiful account of my mother’s early life. It is amazing to me that even at the age of 96, he had such a vivid memory of things that happened 80 years prior. His handwriting was still so clear and steady.
When my father was in home-hospice in 2017 for 10 days, he would spend a few hours talking to the visiting nurse. He actually asked me to show him this writing. He spoke so highly of my mother and told the nurse that he hoped to get better and finish writing about the other stages of her life. Sadly, that didn't happen, but we have heard so many wonderful things about our parents from others and have experienced their great qualities ourselves.
I am sharing his writing today, both the original manuscript and the transcript with our family, friends, and my father’s former students who knew our parents well.
We are so proud of the life they built together and the example they set for us, even if we can't always live up to it.
Raji Ramachandran
Atlanta
---------------------------
Swarnalakshmi: Early life
(By N. S. Ramachandran)
Swarnalakshmi was born on 21 January 1925 in Kolkata. Her mother Annammal and her father Swarnamani were staying there with her maternal grandparents.
She was somewhat frail in health during infancy because the birth occurred a few weeks short of the full term. Careful nurturing brought on the normal growth.
On completion of studies in Allopathy and Ayurveda systems of medicine, Swarnamani took his family to Paramakkudi where his father was working as a lawyer. Sometime later he moved to Nattarasankottai and set up his medical practice. By dint of hard work, he was very successful in the profession.
It was Nattarasankottai where Swarnalakshmi spent her days until she reached the teen age. She got admitted to the Elementary School and she studied upto Standard IV. Those were days when education for girls did not find favour with the society. As a result, she had to discontinue her schooling despite the fact that she was a bright pupil.
Missing formal education was no big deal for her. She learnt a lot of life lessons at home. She had a good grounding in cookery from her mother. Being sharp witted she acquired expertise in culinary art in no time.
She had a thirst for learning. She inherited this trait from her father who was a voracious reader and who had a library of his own. She took to reading Tamil literature like novels, short stories and plays written by eminent authors. She studied with avidity the books available in the local library called Bharati Reading Room. Her younger brother regularly borrowed them for her. This literary activity honed up her knowledge in Tamil. She learnt a smattering of English from her paternal grandfather.
Her pastimes were: working with needle and thread, drawing pictures and listening to music, both concerts and lessons. She put into good use the knitting and crocheting equipment, the drawing materials, the sewing machine, the gramophone and the radio receiver provided by her father.
The house she lived in sat in a place away from the residential area and so there were no girls of her age group to associate with, yet she had, at home, the company of children, two brothers, two cousins, and a sister.
In the early years of the 20th century, the girls of the middle-class Brahmin community got married before they came of age. Accordingly, she wed Ramachandran in May 1936 when she had just turned eleven. It was a four-day wedding celebrated on a grand scale. Her age was such that the festivities, religious and social, made little impact on her.
A couple of years passed by. She was sent to her husband's house in Manamadurai where he was employed as an untrained Graduate Teacher in the OVC High School. She felt at home in the new environment. She rendered all possible help to her mother-in-law and took good care of her two young brothers-in-law.
When Ramachandran went to Saidapet in 1939 for a year's training in Teaching, the family relocated to his hometown, Pudukkottai. On his securing a job in the S.Rm. High School at Nattarasankottai in 1940, they moved to that place. After a four-year stay, the family shifted to Manamadurai where Ramachandran was appointed to a permanent post in the OVC High School.
In Swarnalakshmi's early life, the period between the ages of 15 and 24 was rather a bad patch relating to her health. She had the ill luck to face a nagging and baffling problem. In 1939 while walking along a road, she suffered a blackout and slumped down. In a few seconds she recovered. As days passed on, the attacks occurred frequently and the time taken for recovery grew longer and longer. She had to be under the direct care of her father and treated as advised by specialists. Besides a prolonged therapy, she had to undergo a uterus operation and a lumbar puncture. She fought the disease with unflappable courage to get over it.
During the illness she was relieved of the kitchen chores, particularly cooking, lest she should fall on the wood oven and sustain burns. Now that she had spare time, she thought of a useful activity and took up writing stories. She had some of them published in the then popular journals, Nandavanam, Vellimani and Jaganmohini.
Simplicity, amiability and hospitality were among her distinguishing traits that attracted attention.
N. S. Ramachandran
Atlanta, Dec 01, 2013
