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When the postman knocked
READER G. Nagarajan, after seeing the picture of Annamalai University's main administrative block (Miscellany 19), wonders who the architect was. The building, which also housed the library, was inaugurated in 1937 and built at a cost of nearly Rs. 3,80,000. It was designed by L.M. Chitale, the Maharashtrian architect, who had made Madras his home and who has been followed into the practice by his son and grandson. During the construction, modifications to the design were carried out by Messrs. Edwards, Reid and Booth. Reader M. Muthuraman adds, V.S. Srinivasa Sastri returned to the University to serve as its Vice-Chancellor from 1935 to 1940, succeeding Samuel Runganadhun who had taken his place when the University opened. My correspondent also recalls the galaxy of professors Annamalai University started out with. Amongst them were: Swami Vipulanandaji Maharaj from Ceylon who headed the Tamil Department, eminent History scholars like P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar, C.S. Srinivasachari, who wrote a history of Madras, and S.K. Govindaswamy, who discovered the Chola period paintings in the Tanjore `Big Temple', P. Balakrishnan Nair, an archaeologist who had worked with Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the music college's principal, Sabesa Iyer whose sishya was Musiri Subramania Iyer, and Veena Sambasiva Iyer; the Physics' Department's Dr. S. Ramachandra Rao, a disciple of Sir C.V. Raman; and mathematician Dr. T. Vijayaraghavan, a younger contemporary of Ramanujan.
* A reader who had been at a farewell to Dr. Eleonore Rahimi-Laridjanni writes that, in my piece on April 5, I had missed a most important point in the Eleonore Rahimi story, namely that she had been virtually born into the Goethe Institute. When the Institute was started in 1936, amongst its first staff were a couple who were in time to marry and then have a daughter, Eleonore, who was to continue the family's connection with the Goethe Institute, known in India as the Max Mueller Bhavan. Eleonore's daughter, however, has no plans to continue the family's long association with the Institute.
Mea culpa: I'm sorry, Tishani DOSHI (not Desai, as I had it on April 19). Mea culpa; I must have dozed off as my 50-year-old typewriter raced on with a mind of its own.
S. MUTHIAH
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