R A T H A M 

RATHAM's Story

As a grad student of architecture, the lecture sessions on history of arts and architecture would be dealt using the heavy, grey coloured OHP projectors. I remember my lectures walking in with labeled boxes of sheets that were the earlier version of slide decks. When I started my career as a lecturer teaching the subjects, the OHP projectors have changed into digital projectors that made sharing of downloaded pictures of monuments, maps and details much easy. During one such lecture on south Indian Temple architecture, as I was trying to explain the spatial planning, a student proposed a physical visit to the Mylapore temple that weekend where I can walk them around the campus and explain the structures. I liked this idea and so we met at the temple campus that weekend. I enjoyed guiding them through the structure, pointing out to architectural elements, showing samples of temple aesthetics, design concepts, explaining spatial planning and walking around the temple streets. Since this was well received by the students, the following week another batch of students wanted it organised again and there we were repeating our visit.

After 2 weekends of temple walking and talking, the third weekend pushed us chose another temple to visit. This time a few parents and siblings joined us. Organising these visits needed sometime time and energy. Thankfully a student volunteered to work on that part. With a month long weekend visit to old temples with 15-20 members participating, RATHAM was born in 2012. By then one day trips to places like Gingee, Mahabalipuram, Kanchipuram and Tiruvannamalai were completed. We aimed at one trip a month and had our annual calendar in place for 2013. By 2015 we had around 8-10 regular participants who were there on almost all our trips, month after month. We started doing weekend trips to destinations like Thanjavur, Kumbakonam, Mayavaram, Srirangam and Tiruvarur. Organising the experience with chosen souvenirs, local food, temple prasadam, meeting and conversing with the priests, odhuvars and temple staffs to know about the traditions made our experiences unique. Around 2017, Madhusudhanan Kalaichelvan also doubled up in designing and curating such experiences for other organizers. He started travelling as a subject matter expert or SME on trips organised by other agencies. Post Covid, RATHAM started running again with our first trip to Tirukalukundram in July, 2022.

Now our good friend Madhavan Veeraraghavan helps us in planning and executing the experiencs.