This story is from December 8, 2022

Ace artist-writer Manohar Devadoss passes away in Chennai

Artist, writer and Padma Shri awardee Manohar Devadoss died in Chennai on Wednesday. He was 86. He is survived by his daughter Sujatha Pelletier. Devadoss used pen ink for drawings and had brought out hand-illustrated greeting cards at Christmas and New Year.
Ace artist-writer Manohar Devadoss passes away in Chennai
Manohar Devadoss
CHENNAI: Artist, writer and Padma Shri awardee Manohar Devadoss died in Chennai on Wednesday. He was 86. He is survived by his daughter Sujatha Pelletier. Devadoss used pen ink for drawings and had brought out hand-illustrated greeting cards at Christmas and New Year.
Three years ago, at the age of 83, well-known artist Manohar Devadoss completely lost his eyesight.
But he never let it stop him. "If life denies you something, do something else, that's all," the artist had said in an interview. And so, since he could no longer draw, Devadoss moved on to writing more prolifically (through dictation), mastering the mouth organ and honing his Carnatic music skills.
At 4.30 am on December 7, Devadoss, the artist, who brought the city to life in pen and ink, breathed his last. He was 86. Devadoss is survived by his daughter Sujatha Pelletier.
Ace artist-writer Manohar Devadoss no more
Manohar Devadoss and his wife Mahema, who was a quadriplegic following a road accident in 1972

Devadoss, who was born in Madurai in 1936, always had a penchant for drawing. He began to notice he had trouble with his eyesight when he was a teenager but never thought much of it, until he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease, in his 30s. He slowly lost vision in his right eye and had tunnel vision in his left. But rather than let it stop him, it just made him more prolific in his desire to capture landmarks of Chennai and Madurai to scale in pen and ink.

In 1972, Devadoss and his wife Mahema met with a road accident, leaving Mahema a quadriplegic. From their home in Chennai, the couple decided to craft greeting cards, with Devadoss making pen and ink drawings of heritage buildings in Madurai and Chennai and Mahema penning the text. All the proceeds went to charities supporting free eye surgeries. After his wife's death in 2008, he started the Mahema Devadoss Endowment Fund at Aravind Eye Hospital and Sankara Nethralaya, where to date, the corpus funds of these total more than 1.5 crore.
"He first began to use graph sheets to draw the buildings, then designed a near-vertical easel and invested in specialised lighting to help him see his sketches better," says Sheila D'Souza, who helped him two decades. Devadoss also bought himself custom-made glasses with +27 power to counter his near-sightedness and +16 to aid distance vision. "He would keep his face just a few inches away from the paper so he could see what he was doing," says Sheila.
In his lifetime, Devadoss wrote eight books. His first was Green Well Years, published in 1997, on his life in Madurai, which is in its fourth reprint. The last book he wrote - Madras Inked - was published in 2021 and contained around 60 drawings of Chennai landmarks such as the Santhome Church and Victoria Public Hall. He was halfway through a ninth book.
"He was busy right to the end. Every day he would be visited by friends, government officials, and artists and make time for everyone," says his friend Munish Sivagurunathan. Devadoss mentioned in an interview that it was the goodness of people that kept him going. "Friends would take me out on drives in the evening to see the buildings I was drawing. That was the only light in which I could kind of see something, albeit very little." A few years ago, architects from the city got together and sent in an application for a Padma Shri, which Devadoss was awarded in 2020. "He was unstoppable," says Tripura Sundari Sevval, one of the architects who had sent in his nomination.
On Wednesday, Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin condoled the death of the artist and called him a symbol of Madurai, for his ability to capture the beauty of the historical places of the city accurately through his artwork. "He is a true example of an artist, a writer, a humanitarian," said Stalin.
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