Dhanabagyam (on left) and neighbours of late DMK leader M.Karunanidhi’s childhood residence at Thirukkuvalai pay floral tributes to his portrait on Wednesday. S.Dhanabagyam, 97, the only nonagenarian who outlives the departed 94-year-old DMK leader M.Karunanidhi in his native village Thirukuvalai in Nagapattinam district, is replete with fond memories of him. The cost of the modest concrete house she lives now was sponsored by Karunanidhi. Though looking frail and hard of hearing, Ms. Dhanabagyam is full of memories: “When Thalaivar (leader) visited the village during 2006, he asked me what I wanted. I sought a house and he immediately arranged for its construction. When he visited Thirukuvalai again during 2009, I asked for a gold chain. He promised me the gift next time. But, he is gone now,” she said turning emotional. Dhanabagyam Since then, Karunanidhi’s family members have been calling on Ms. Dhanabagyam whenever they visited the Angalamman Temple in the village. If not for Thalaivar, the village would not have got schools and a hospital, the old woman, the only survivor among 13 siblings, said. “Thalaivar was the groom’s man for my marriage that took place at Karaikudi,” the woman recalled saying repeatedly: “Avar oru sirantha manithar” (He was an exemplary man). “Since last night, my mother was glued to television at a house in the neighbourhood watching the news of his death,” Jothi, the eldest of Dhanabagyam’s four daughters, who looks after her, said. “The village that had only a handful of houses a few decades ago saw some development only after a road was laid on the instructions of Kalaignar when he was the Chief Minister,” Ms. Jothi said. Her neighbour Kandasamy (67), son of late Sethuraman, elaborated on what he described as Kalaignar’s philanthropic mindset – “He readily obliged when I approached him once with a request for a job for my relative Thyagasundaram as pharmacist in Tiruvarur Government Medical College.” G.S.Kumar (63), who was a primary school boy when his family used to play host to the then young rising politician during his visits to the village, said of the late leader’s food habit: “Kalaignar used to relish eggs without yolk. He used to ask my mother to prepare gravy with ‘nethili’ dry fish as well.”

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