Sundargee

Roja Muthiah

Roja Muthiah was a signboard artist who lived in Kottaiyur, near Karaikkudi in Sivagangai district of Tamilnadu. Roja Muthiah Chettiyar began collecting books in the early 1950s when he moved to Chennai (formerly known as Madras). At first, he bought books from Chennai’s Moore Market to inspire ideas for his signboards. However, he soon fell in love with the books themselves and began to collect them in large quantities. After his entire collection was stolen twice from his Madras flat, he moved to his ancestral home in Kottaiyur permanently.

Over the years, Roja Muthiah scoured book stalls all over Tamil Nadu for treasures until his library outgrew the house. He rented two sheds on nearby streets in the village that were soon filled to capacity. Roja Muthiah is said to have spent sixteen hours a day among his books. His daily labour was these hours spent reading the books he purchased, indexing, cross-referencing, and finding space to store them.

Until his premature death on June 4, 1992, Roja Muthiah could be found reading, compiling, and writing with the help of his daughter and two assistants, amidst heaps of books, clippings, journals, and artworks in his house. Ironically, it was his lifelong effort to preserve the life of his library that shortened his own life, as every month he dusted his shelves as well as his lungs with insecticide. In the last years of his life, his health fading, Roja Muthiah worried that his death would mean the demise of his collection as well.

Fortunately, his collection was purchased by the University of Chicago and subsequently turned the collection to the Roja Muthiah Research Library Trust. The Trust has been expanding the collection. See www.rmrl.in

He has also authored a few books.