Professor Mulamoodi Adi Lakshmi was a polyglot and a scholar of Tamil and Telugu literature. She was deputed to Russia by the Ministry of External Affairs to promote Indian studies at the Oriental Faculty in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), and to teach Tamil, Telugu, and Shiva Siddhartha. She taught and promoted Indian languages, and among her many publications widely read in Russia, How to Teach Tamil and Telugu Through Russian remains a classic text.