A tribute to Nanjamma Chinnappa, chronicler of Kodava heritage  Premium

As the celebrated author passed away in March 2024, writer and journalist P.T. Boppanna is set to release a book honouring her, titled Nanjamma Chinnappa – Chronicler of Coorg Culture. The book is a collage of works of Nanjamma that talks about her setting the image of a quintessential Kodavathi, her work on the architectural heritage of Kodagu, ancestral homes and Coorg cuisine. It is also a personal tribute looking at how the Chinnappa couple guided Bopanna’s journey as an author.

The Pattole Palame (Silken Lore), originally compiled by the folklorist Nadikerianda Chinnappa in 1924, is considered a treasure trove of Kodava oral traditions, including songs, rituals, and stories that have been passed down through generations. Originally written in Kodava, it was the late Nanjamma Chinnappa and her late husband Boverianda Chinnappa who translated the work to English in 2003, making this treasured piece of literature accessible for Kodavas as well as others interested in oral literature around the globe.

As the celebrated author passed away in March 2024, writer and journalist P.T. Boppanna is set to release a book honouring her, titled Nanjamma Chinnappa – Chronicler of Coorg Culture. The book is a collage of works of Nanjamma that talks about her setting the image of a quintessential Kodavathi, her work on the architectural heritage of Kodagu, ancestral homes and Coorg cuisine. It is also a personal tribute looking at how the Chinnappa couple guided Bopanna’s journey as an author.

Speaking to The Hindu, Bopanna said that Nanjamma and her late husband worked as a team for various projects and were associated with some of his work too. “The Chinnappas were closely associated with my book and website projects for over 15 years,” he said.  

“Nanjamma, a statistician of international repute, and her husband Chinnappa, an engineer, left for Cambridge, England, in 1974 where Nanjamma was a visiting fellow of Cambridge University. In 1975, they went to Canada to continue their careers and returned to India in 1995. Their first project after returning from Canada was to translate into English Pattole Palame, a book on Kodava culture, folk songs and traditions, written by their common grandfather Nadikerianda Chinnappa,” he explained.  

Boppanna said that it took Nanjamma and her husband nearly eight years to complete the translation of the book which runs into 700-plus pages and was published in 2003. “The couple will be remembered mainly for their monumental book Ainmanes of Kodagu, on the traditional dwelling places of the original inhabitants of Kodagu. The Chinnappas believed that Ainmanes (house of elders/ancestral home) and their surroundings were sacred heritage sites that need to be preserved for future generations,” he said.

The Chinnappas are said to have visited close to 700 traditional and functional Ainmanes belonging to all communities in Kodagu and clicked 1,500 photographs during their field-work which took them five years. The book was published in 2014. “The couple also put together a website www.ainmanes.com that contains detailed information and photographs of each Ainmane visited, including oral narratives related to the Okka (clan) to whom the Ainmane belongs,” explained Boppanna. 

The couple took a lot of interest in Boppanna’s own work on Kodava heritage and guided him in many ways, he said. “The Chinnappas were associated with my book and website projects since around 2007. They had gone through the manuscript of all my nine books, including my last book Round and About with P.T. Bopanna, published in 2022. They checked my books for grammatical and factual errors and offered suggestions for improving the content. Initially I used to visit their home in Bengaluru. After they shifted to Mysuru a few years ago we exchanged emails and messages. They wrote the foreword for my book Are Kodavas (Coorgs) Hindus? They also wrote the afterword for my book My Coorg Chronicle,” he explained.