Annamalai Swami (1906-1995) is considered an

important Indian jnani, a devotee of Ramana Maharshi

(Bhagavan).
Annamalai Swami was born in Tondankurichi, a small
village of Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu, south-west of
India, and received from her parents the name: Sella
Perumal. His father was an important person in the village,
working as a farmer, astrologer, painter and builder, who
could also fabricate and erect statues gopuram (towers of
temples). Perumal was a young man with limited education
who at 17 ran away from home and has become a sannyasi.
In 1928, when he was 22 years old, he traveled to
Tiruvannamalai to meet Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
who lived near the city along the base of the slope of the
holy mountain Arunachala. Perumal became the Maharshis
personal attendant and given the name Annamalai Swami
(Annamalai is another name for Arunachala). Swami
Annamalais duties, after being directed to do so by Sri
Ramana, was to oversee all phases of the ongoing
construction, continuing expansion, and positive growth of
the Ramana Ashram, including the goshala (cow shed),
dining hall, dispensary and other projects.
In 1938, ten years after his arrival in Tiruvannamalai,
Swami Annamalai realized the Self, awakening to the
Absolute under the grace and light of Sri Ramana. Five or
six years later, sometime in the mid-1940s, Ramana
instructed him to leave the ashram and engage in intense
Sadhana.
Following his departure from Sri Ramanasramam,
Annanamalai took up a quiet, austere life in his own hut in
Palakottu (Palakothu), an area that borders the western
boundary adjacent to his Ramanas home. He would
occasionally meet Ramana on his walks, but never again in
the fifty years that followed did he reenter Sri
Ramanasramam nor engage in conversation with him.

A few years after his departure, acting on Ramanas

instructions, he built the Sri Annamalai Swami Ashram
which is located near Sri Ramanasramam. He lived there
until his death on November 9, 1995.