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Triumph in the Archives
March 14, 2012 | 1 Comment | Betsy Woodman
Hooray!
A photo of Mr. P. A. Thiruvenkatachari and my dad hung on the wall of my dad’s study for three or four decades, and I thought it had disappeared when my sisters and I cleaned out my parents’ house. But today, in the Woodman papers in the Colby-Sawyer College archives, I hit pay dirt!
Photo credit: Colby-Sawyer College Archives
Many thanks to college archivist Kelli Bogan for digitizing this!
Here’s Mr. Patch, with my dad, in an undated photograph taken at Patch’s lodgings on the outskirts of Madras, now called Chennai. The three vertical stripes on Patch’s forehead show that he is a Vaishnavite (or Vishnuite) Hindu. Vaishnavism is one of the main traditions of Hinduism; its adherents honor the god Vishnu and his incarnations, particularly Rama and Krishna.
In one of his letters, my dad asked Patch for some basic facts about himself.
Patch replied: “Since you are rather curious to know the milestones in my life, I should please you by saying: I was born on Dec 23, 1882…”
Whoa! 1882! That set me to googling and flipping atlas pages. By 1882, the British were firmly established in India, but elsewhere the British Empire was still growing. It wouldn’t hit its peak for another forty years, when it ruled over roughly a fifth of the world’s population. When the British finally left quit India, in 1947, Patch was in his 65th year. He saw that empire and others rise and fall.
He also lived through a dizzying range of inventions, events and transitions: the airplane, the motorcar, two world wars,the global depression, the atomic bomb, decades of struggle for Indian independence, Independence Day (August 15, 1947), and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in January, 1948.
In this letter, however, Patch gives some key dates from his youth in the early years of the century: “…passed matric in 1903…and BA in 1907; in 1909 gave up law studies and joined school service…”
More on Mr. Patch next time!. Stay well, folks.
Betsy
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Dear Ms Woodman, I came across your blog by chance (yes, on a random Google search on the Travancore sisters) and found it so interesting that I have since read many of your posts. Your family’s impressions of life and people in Chennai make engrossing reading, some of it relates perhaps to a few years before I was born. I am quite touched by the manner in which you have recorded your parents’ memories. It inspires me to do the same. Your father’s friendship with Patch is fascinating. I recognize the character type as I belong to the same community of Vaishnavite Tambrams. I like your simple style of writing, reminds me of another American – Robert Kanigel who writes as though he was born Indian. My best wishes to you and your family.