Chennai: Many know Srinivasa Ramanujan as a Maths man. But beyond Mathematics, Ramanujan was an ardent devotee of Namagiri Thayar, the deity in Namakkal temple.
He apparently received “permission” (utharavu) from the deity to go ahead with his Cambridge scholarship programme.
His adopted son Narayanan (72) and his grand-children perform special puja on his birthday, December 22 every year at the Namakkal temple and distribute food to the poor in his memory.
Speaking to this newspaper about his father, Narayanan said, “I was adopted by Janaki Ramanujan in 1950 as a 10-year-old. Though I was not fortunate to enjoy the warmth of my foster father, I learnt about him through Janaki amma. She told me that Ramanujan often got the solutions for tough Maths problems in his dreams. He would wake up immediately and write down the steps.”
Narayanan, a stockbroker, said he was the only person with whom Janaki amma could share her feelings.
“She was living in a small portion next to my grandmother Thangammal’s house. My biological mother Soundaravalli wanted Janaki amma to bring me up as she was known to be a martinet.”
On the tough life led by his adopted parents, he said, “Janaki amma was terribly sad that Ramanujan died at such a young age. She told me that he died due to pneumonia and TB contacted due to malnourishment and cold weather on his England trip as he did not like the food there and managed only with the podi packets shipped by his mother Komalathammal”.
Narayanan’s family receives many visitors from foreign countries who search for Ramanujan’s roots.
“We give them the information we got from Janaki amma. We received a bust of Ramanujan gifted to us by mathematical researchers in the US in 1985. Our children pray before that statue every day,” added Narayanan.
Ramanujan’s great grandchild Neha (7), however, has one unsolved puzzle — “Why doesthatha look so serious in all the photos? I want him to smile.”
From Wikipedia
Personality and spiritual life
Ramanujan has been described as a person with a somewhat shy and quiet disposition, a dignified man with pleasant manners.He lived a rather Spartan life while at Cambridge. Ramanujan's first Indian biographers describe him as rigorously orthodox. Ramanujan credited his acumen to his family Goddess, Namagiri of Namakkal. He looked to her for inspiration in his work, and claimed to dream of blood drops that symbolised her male consort,Narasimha, after which he would receive visions of scrolls of complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes. He often said, "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God."
Hardy cites Ramanujan as remarking that all religions seemed equally true to him.Hardy further argued that Ramanujan's religiousness had been romanticised by Westerners and overstated—in reference to his belief, not practice—by Indian biographers. At the same time, he remarked on Ramanujan's strict observance of vegetarianism.
