Acknowledgements - (Revitalising Chettinadu Heritage)

My thanks go to several people who had been very instrumental in making this dissertation into a complete material. Dr. Ranjana Mittal had always been an inspiration, not just in this programme, but from last four years. I’m very grateful to her for accepting to be my Guide in this and I thank her for the all the encouragement and guidance she had given till now. I would also like to thank Prof. Malay Chatterjee and Mr. Eino Mehta for all the advice they had given.

I would be very happy to express gratitude to Rajkumar for being my mentor in all that I do; Nikhil for all the expert advice, title page and sketches; Elango, Solachi, for getting the treasured book of “The Chettiar Heritage”; Venkatesh for all the hospitality I got during the visit to Karikudi and Mr. Sonan for being my travelling guide in those remote villages; Janany whom I haven’t even met, but received all those images and the constant enquiry through mail; Sakthi, Francis and Aasaithambi for valuable opinion and instructions during the study; Ar.Sathyaprakash Varanshi for those Pictures he took in the NASA Louis I Kahn jury; Indumathi, Chitra, Veldurai, Sankaran, Vijay, Niruban for those timely help and assistance in whatever way I needed; Gaurav Dubey for helping me take the prints; all the householders of the Chettinadu Mansions where I visited for case studies who showed their hospitality in every way; Premsun, Gokul, Rajiv, Surbhi, Aneesha, Kavery, Karthik, Shruti, Archana, Sriraj, Eldo, Manishi, Shashank, Vasanth, Aparna, Akilan for all the concern and notice they had shown; Sruti for proof reading, editing, providing inputs, suggestions, etc., without whom it would have been more difficult for the completion; and several others who contributed in this.

I want to thank my family, for the constant support in every possible way and every stage of this endeavour.

Infact I would like to be deeply indebted for all the sustaining effort given by my Lenovo laptop and Sony Digital camera without which this dissertation would have been devoid of colour and facts literally.

Maniyarasan R