In remembrance of my paternal-aunt, Smt. Sarojini, and her unique and personalized gift.

This blog post is in remembrance and appreciation of a unique personalized gift from my paternal-aunt, Smt. Sarojini, to my wife, in November’ 1983, two months after the birth of our eldest son.

My father had three sisters all younger to him and Smt. Sarojini aunt was the eldest of them. She was a very affectionate person; my siblings, me and all my cousins fondly addressed her as sister – calling her Sarojini akkaiah instead of atthaiah. She outlived all her seven siblings and passed away recently.

Her gift is a notebook with 32 pages of several Mangala Harathi songs, Keerthanalu and some excerpts from our scriptures like Bhagavad-Gita which she recollected and very affectionately wrote down for my wife. This is a precious gift for us.

With the passage of time, almost 35 years, the pages have browned a little and are becoming fragile. To preserve the rare content in the book - in my aunt’s handwriting and in remembrance of my aunt, I recently scanned all the pages. Today I am posting it to my journal - my blog post, for posterity.

Note: To know about Mangala Harathi, you may click on this word appearing anywhere in this article and to read the manuscripts below, you may click on the scanned images to zoom in.