Meenakumari Venkateswaran

Meenakumari was born in Chennai and brought up in Mandaveli. Gary Paulsen once famously said, “You can take the man out of the woods, but you can’t take the woods out of the man.” In much the same way, you can, by her admission, take Meena out of Mandaveli but cannot take Mandaveli out of Meena. She is not going to forget her roots in a hurry.

The right place to start this story is with her grandma. For a long time, Meenakumari was introduced as “Meenakshi Ammal’s granddaughter.” For those who don’t know, her grandma is a pioneering author of cook book Samaithu Paar. Every South-Indian bride’s parting gift would be incomplete without her cookbook. The book still has its niche, almost 60 years after her death.

Listening to her father, P S Sankaran’s stories, Meenakumari grew up learning the scriptures and her grandma’s trials and tribulations. “Even though I was not fortunate to meet her as she died two years before I was born, I was inspired by her throughout my life.” A young widow, Grandma Meenakshi, wrote the cookbook with undiminished enthusiasm over five years. Many mocked her.

“Everyone cooks at home and eats. Why do we need a book for that?” was a common refrain. But she wasn’t cowed down. And her son, Sankaran, religiously edited the meticulously written notes of his mother. He set up a publication unit to commercialize it, and the first book came out with just a few hundred recipes. It sold like hot idlis. Three parts of the book were published during Meenakshi’s lifetime.

In the later years, Sankaran’s wife, Vasantha, and their two children, Meena and Ram, also helped with the book since Sankaran was involved in extensive travel as an auditor in the AG’s office.

My grandma’s life taught me invaluable lessons; one of the most important is that no one person can achieve anything alone. It requires teamwork to win. While grandma wrote, it was dad who edited, published and marketed it. And in the initial years, my father’s extended family in various locations helped by stocking the books to distribute it to the booksellers of the area.

Today, Meenakumari’s sister in law ‘Priya Ramkumar’ runs the publishing business and has authored more books under the franchise.

Everything in the Universe has rhythm, everything dances, wrote Maya Angelou.

Vasantha was fond of dancing. So, she enrolled young Meena in the Bharatanatyam classes of Padma Shri Sudharani Raghupathy. The Dance School christened ‘Shree Bharatalaya’ started in June 1972 in Luz Church Road. To Meena, who joined in 1973, it was a lifechanging even

“Dance is not just an art. It is a holistic way of living. Sudha aunty was stately, tall, and beautiful with a wonderful personality. I yearned to be like her.”