M.Krishnaswami, known popularly as “MK” to his large circle of friends, passed away on October 15, 2013 at the age of 88 at his residence in Abiramapuram, Chennai.
MK was the husband of the acclaimed classical musician, Sangitha Kalanidhi Dr Mani Krishnaswami. MK was a respected and widely known patron of Carnatic music.
Born in 1926 into a family of lawyers, MK hailed from Tirupati where he completed his early education. He graduated in Law from the Madras Law College. He began his career in New Delhi in the Rajya Sabha Legal Secretariat which gave him the prized opportunity to associate with his life-long heroes President Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and Lok Sabha Speaker M.Ananthasayanam Iyengar.
MK later worked a short stint in Calcutta as Dy.Director in the Office of the Director General of Civil Supplies. Later in 1960, he was deputed by the Govt of India to serve as Secretary of the Tagore Centenary Celebration Committee, Madras, headed by the then Union Minister C. Subramaniam, the Madras State Chief Minister K. Kamaraj and Rukmini Arundale.
In 1964, at the behest of the doyen of Indian journalism Ramnath Goenka, MK joined the Indian Express Group and served there until 1972 as General Manager of the Madras and Vijayawada edition-branches. In 1973 MK was handpicked by late T.S.Krishna of theTVS Group to serve as Senior Personnel Manager of M/s Lucas-TVS. MK was well respected in the city’s fraternity of corporate industrial-relations managers and trade-unions.
MK was a very popular and active figure for over three decades in the Carnatic music world of Chennai and in his native Tirupati. He was a constant guide to his wife, Dr Mani Krishnaswami during all the years that she climbed to the peak of her long and illustrious musical career which ended in her demise in 2002.
MK also presided over and successfully developed the premier musical and cultural institution in Tirupati viz. The Thyragaraja Temple Trust. He also lent his services in various non-formal capacities to a host of cultural and religious institutions such as the Tirupati-Tirumala Devasthanam (TTD), the Madras Music Academy, Kalakshetra, Nadopaasana Music Sabha, Sruti magazine, to name only a few.
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