On April 25, 2022, CTU lost one of our major donors — Dr. N.V. Raghavan — a dedicated Annadhata for more than 8 years in a row.
For various health reasons including a major surgery that was done the previous week, he has never attended the Utsavam in the recent past. But this did not stop him from sincerely sending in his contribution every year! In fact in 2017, Dr. N.V. Raghavan was mailing the CTU donation just a couple of days after our festival and was very apologetic.
Only the previous day I talked to him at length about Mathematician Ramanujan and Mrs Janaki Ramanujan. Since he was deeply rooted in our ritualistic temple practices, he arranged for the shipment of big vahanams like the Gaja Vahanam and Garuda Vahanam and donated them to Sri Venkateswara Swami (Balaji) Temple, Aurora, IL.
I knew his family from 1969. When I emailed the sudden demise of Dr. N.V. Raghavan to Kalyani Krishnamachari (another dedicated CTU volunteer from the past), she sent her son and daughter all the way from New York, to attend his last rites.
In grief,
Dr. T.E.S. Raghavan