Little Lord

Abstract

Crowds ramble by on foot and rickshaw on this busy dirt road lined with small shops and peddlers seated on blankets selling vegetables, silks, tin plates, and almost anything else you might imagine. Most of the people are thin Indians clad in light, loose-fitting garments. Once in a while, a British officer or administrator passes by in a khaki uniform or formal suit. Cows and goats roam freely, eating whatever scraps and waste they can find in this hot and humid place. This is Sarangapani Street in late-nineteenth-century Kumbakonam, a town in the southeast Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Ramanujan’s childhood home.