‘Paamé’ – A Book By Bala

“ Paamé ” – The History And Culture Of The Badagas Of The Nilgiris By B.Balasubramaniam, Encompasses A Comprehensive History Of The Badaga Community And Showcases To The World The Unique Aspects Of Badaga History And Culture And Is A Treasure Trove In Ethnology.

At last we have an authentic book on the Badagas of the Nilgiri Mountains in south India by Jagathala Bella Gowder BALASUBRAMANIAM, an engineer by profession who has authored many books on management. Known among friends as Bala, is the second son of another great Badaga Mr.Bella Gowder whose knowledge on and of Badagas is legendary. Bella Gowder is 92 years young and is fit as a fiddle. See this page to know about this informed elder
Bala with his wife Gayathri
Bala with his wife Gayathri, great grand daughter of Rao Bahadur HJ Bellie Gowder. The cover design of this book is based on her oil painting of ‘an elderly Badaga man dressed in traditional attire, telling stories to two boys around a fire‘- Ayya paame haygudhuna, kichu gaadhundu kunave kethra
Bala, who is known to me for the past many decades, told me in an exclusive chat that it took him two and a half years of research and labour to produce this book ‘Paame’ which he wanted to be as authentic as possible as far as the origin and history of the Badagas are concerned. Though, for practical purposes, he had to restrict the number of pages, he has material for another hundred pages which he may incorporate in the future editions.
This book is published by Elkon Animations, Bangalore and is priced at Rs.295/- Incidentally, Elkon Animations is owned by another talented and great Badaga Engineer and my friend Yedapally Raju who, by the way, is a good friend of Infosys Narayanamurthy .
You may buy this book from leading book stores located in M.G.Road, Bangalore or from the Publishers at Elkon Animations, 11 First Cross, Bhuvaneshwari Nagar, CV Raman Nagar, Bangalore – 560093.It is available at Higginbothams Ooty,Chennai and Coimbatore and also at Oxford book house, Coimbatore.


I have gone through the book a couple of times and can say with confidence that this book will make every Badaga very proud to belong to this great and unique community.
My only crib is that the book could have had more pictures
‘Paame’is a promising book.The amount of hard work – research – is visible right through. Bala makes his intention of writing this book right in the beginning in the ‘Preface’ 
“This book is primarily intended to showcase to the world the history of this small, well-knit(Badaga)community, that till half a century ago was only residing in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamilnadu.At the start of the 20th Century, a few leaders of the community with the immense foresight saw the future of the community prospering only by imparting formal education to their youth”