Great Women of India: - Anna Mani

ANNA MANI (23 August 1918 – 16 August 2001)

Google Doodle honours Anna Mani

Anna Mani (Amminikochamma)

In this blog entry is the story of my aunt, Dr.. Anna Mani, whom I called Amminikochamma (little mother Amminni).

She was the sister of my sister-in-law’s father. 

She was also the sister of M. M. Philip (Babychayan), one of the last ICS officers in independent India who was Secretary General of the Post and Telegraph Department of the Government of India. 

Babychayan was married to my father’s first cousin, Pennammakochamma. 

While I was studying in St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, they were one of my guardians. I used to visit them regularly as she would put out a feast for me. 

When I needed my first Indian  Passport to travel for further studies in London, I had to apply for it in Delhi as my residence was in the college. It was Babychayan who was my sponsor and referrnce.

Amminikochamma was an unique personality. Tough as nails. I remember her telling me how she survived in that male dominated environment. 

She made and executed her decisions, always meticulously planned, legally correct, and only after it was executed did she inform her superiors.

Dr. M. V. Kurian, the head of Amul, was exactly the same - a Malayali characteristic?

Amminikochamma used to visit us in Bombay very often when she was living in Pune, just as we visited her there. She was a close friend of my mother as they were pioneers of women being educated in Kerala in the 1920s.. My mother and Amminnikochamma were like sisters. My mother was her moral support when she had problems. 

 

She was good fun with great sarcastic dry humour. She told us all her various exploits. As children, we revelled in her stories. All of therm always had a moral. 

Later, when I was to visit Delhi for work in the 1970s, I used to visit her at the Metrology office. She asked me to help the son of her colleague, Rajashekar, who later worked for me in Bangalore.

After her retirement, she joined the Raman Research Institute. She knew I was the Business Director of an organisation called Agropolymers Research Pvt. Ltd. which provided services to the rubber plantations by testing the soil and leaf samples to give recommendations of the fertiliser inputs to the growers. We used the services of a Malaysian Institute to do the testing. We had top quality agronomists as our advisors.

Late Sir C. V. Raman had bought a beautiful 100 acre farm in Kengeri with some of his Nobel prize money. He had planted a  varied variety of trees and plants there, including various medicinal plants, long term plants as cashew, orchards as chikku asd mangoes, rice and even flowers such as the African marigold which would be harvested and sold in the Bangalore flower market. 

The farm had a river running on two sides and on the third side was a small perenial tank. There was plenty of water.

After Sir Raman's death, the farm fell into disuse. 

Amminikochamma, knowing the work I was  doing in tthe agricultural field, asked me whether I could revive the farm and make it a haven for visiting physicists  to relax in.

I left my regular job and for two years took on this task. 

I developed the existing plants and trees and introduced citronella from which we could extract cittonella oil to supply the pharmaceutical and other industries. 

Every morning at 4 am the workers would collect the marigold flowers and we would take them by bullock cart to City Market in Bangalore to be auctioned to the flower vendors who made garlands for the religious ceremonies in all the temples around the city.

In two years I was able to resurect the farm. For the Pongal festival I invited Lady Raman who has survived her husband. I took her around the farm and gave her a sack of her favourite Ponnai rice which had an aroma far superior to the famous Basmathi rice from Debra Dun.

She was so happy that she told me that she could now rest in peace. She she passed away a few months later.

This interaction with Amminikochamma  taught me a lot as she showed she was a tough taskmaster and demanded excellence in whatever was done in her charge. She would reprimand me if I even took one wrong step and she controlled the budget ferociously. 

Only when the farm became self supporting did she stop her control, and it took all of two years hard work to reach that stage.

Amminikochamma  was born in the Modayail family of Peermedu in Travancore. She transformed from a shy schoolgirl born in a traditional Syrian Christian to a cardamom planter in Kerala’s Idukki district to a scientist who made India self-reliant on meteorology. This has many lessons for the Indian young girls of today. The choices Amminikochamma made, made the difference.

On her eighth birthday her father asked her whether she wanted a pair of diamond ear rings. She asked him instead to buy a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. She read all the books available in the local Library. 

Mahatma Gandhi visited her hometown when he reached Travancore as part of the freedom movement. Listening to his ideas of self-reliance at the early age of seven was a turning point in her life. Inspired by him and the Indian National Movement, she started wearing Khadi.

When she graduated from Presiddncy College in Madras University with a BSc in Physics in 1939, she decided against marriage. She was clear on what to do in life.

 Amminnikochsmma never married as marriage was never the end for her. 

She worked as a ‘demonstrator’ at the Women’s Christian College in Madras for a short while. She wanted to go for higher studies. She did not have funding. She managed to get a scholarship and a seat in IISc Bangalore in 1945. From there she went to Imperial College, London with a Government of India scholarship. She specialized in the application of meteorological instruments. 

Rejecting to work and stay back in Britain, she returned to India in 1948 to join the Meteorological department of India in Poona. By 1953, she became the head of the division with 121 men working for her.

She was responsible for procuring meteorological instruments. As India was importing all the meteorological instruments from Britain, Amminikochamma wanted to make India independent in making all the weather instruments. 

She set up a small workshop in Bangalore that manufactured instruments for measuring wind speed and solar energy. She also set up a meteorological observatory and an instrumentation tower at the Thumba rocket launching facility. In 1967, her team developed the Indian ozonesonde, a balloon-borne instrument to measure ozone levels in the atmosphere. She worked with my brother who was a rubber technologist to devlop the rubber balloons which could withstandthe very low temperatures at high altitudes.

Not only she made India self-reliant in measuring aspects of the weather but also helped lay the ground for harnessing solar and wind power as alternative sources of energy.

She was transferred to Delhi in 1969 and later retired as the Deputy Director-General of the Indian Meteorological Department in 1976. 

Even after retirement, she remained active by working at the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore and edited science journals. In the 1980s, Amminikochamma published two pioneering books viz. 'Handbook of Solar Radiation Data for India' and 'Solar Radiation over India'. Both these books became a key reference for those engaged in the design and deployment of solar thermal systems in India and paved the way for several solar energy harvesting projects such as the one in Kochi International Airport which is the first fully solar energy run airport in the world.

Amminikochamma is one of those unsung patriotic heroes of Modern India who contributed to India’s growth with a scientific temper and modern outlook. Her life should be publicized more to inspire Indian women of today.

(Based on the Wikipedia outline and my personal interactions with Amminikochamma.)