In the past few weeks I have given you a glimpse of the success of the “Laughing Goddess” Annikki in a variety of fields.
Other food designing - Edible Art 2
That is not the extent of the talents of this fascinating personality..
I give here her work as a researcher and an author in producing books on a variety of subjects.
The second book was authored jointly with me on how to survive in Finland. This book was produced after 10 years of intensive research by both of us. There was no Google or AI those days so research meant physical research.
She then carried an intensive course of 4 years on Montessori Edication between 1991 and 1995 which she completed with distinction of 98%.
She then wrote her comprehensive book on raising a child the Montessori way applicable for children between 0 and 6 years.
She helped me design and prepare the Coffee Table Book for the Golden Reunion of my school Class of 1959.
The next book she authored in two stages, first only in Finnish and the 2nd edition was in both Finnish and English on freedom of speech in Finland. In this she used her Finnish sarcasm tone fullest extent, butI was not competent to get the same effect with the English translation!
Then with me and Sriradhakrishnan Polsetti, she authored the book on Edible Art, both in English and Finnish. Here her photographic skills were also evident, a subject I have not touched upon in this series.
She jointly authored our book after our final visit to India.
Besides this she has authored many tens of articles on a variety of subjects published in many publications, especially our fortnightly newsletter, Findians Briefings, which had a circulation of about 80000 readers worldwide.
I recently showed you in my previous blog, Face to Face - Kanha, one of her articles published in our Oulu newspaper, Kaleva
Because of many moves of residence in the last three years, I have lost many of her articles and also lost a lot of her research work on a variety of subjects such as music, religious intolerance, yoga, nutrition, and many more subjects covering all aspects of life.
Her hand written notes were all in shorthand Finnish so I was not able to understand most them, and she had lost the ability to decipher them.
There is a saying that one whose TV size is bigger than one’s bookshelf needs to be listened to with great caution.
In our case, Annikki’s bookshelf is 30 times mine on such a variety of subjects as religion, nutrition, gardens, recipes, interior designing, and filled with such great authors as R. K. Narayan and Jim Corbett.
She has almost the entire collection of books by and about Maria Montessori and the Montessori system of education.
She also has almost the entire collection of books by Ellen G. White and her prophetic works.
Like me, she grew up on the annual diet of the Manorama Year Book, so her general knowledge was vast. The difference between her and me was that I shouted my "knowledge" from the mountain top but she used her knowledge in daily life to get things done!
She has been my friend, guide and counsellor on almost every important event in our lives. She has never been politically oriented but she stood for human rights and dignity of the human being.
When we had the recent spat with the O-India Ry, she very quickly advised me to terminate links as this association did not fit with our Guiding Principles.
I had no hesitation in following her advice as she has never been wrong!
