Lalithammal.Ambalappuzha: Lalithammal, 77, wife of revolutionary leader K.C.S. Mani, died of kidney ailments here on Wednesday.
She grew up in the tranquility of a verdant, nondescript village of the erstwhile princely state of Travancore, now part of Tamil Nadu. She was far removed from the travails of Mani, a true-blood revolutionary preparing to assassinate the most powerful man in the kingdom, dewan C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer.
Mani meticulously carried out his planned attack on the dewan near the venue of a classical recital at Thycaud in Travancore on July 25, 1947. Lalithammal was six years old then. The dewan escaped with a gash on the nose but resigned and left soon after following the Travancore royal family's decision to join the Indian union.
When Lalithammal married Mani in 1963, she was 24. She did not know that her husband was the one who sent a powerful dewan packing.
She came to Ambalappuzha and settled there after marriage. Ambalappuzha was special to her and she could not leave even after her husband’s death on September 20, 1987.
At the time of marriage, KCS was 43 but the age difference never affected their lives. Though she was a nursery school teacher, she quit work after marriage.
