(This is in memory of Pt
Jawaharlal Nehru who died this day in 1964)
It was one of those dog days in the summer of
1964.Ramanna as usual went to Subraya’s hotel for his morning cup of tea.
Something was amiss. Subraya did not prepare the deep fried items like the
banana bun and the onion bajis which Ramanna always used to have with his tea.
People were speaking in agitated tones. On enquiry with Subraya he came to know
that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru India’s most beloved prime minister died of a
cardiac attack.
Kaigadi Sankata Krishna Rao in
his Khaddar mundu and banian was having coffee chuckling at the same time over a
cartoon of Shinganna in the just arrived Navabharatha daily.Those days Rao’s
favourite daily ‘The Hindu’ used to come the next day’s evening from Madras. Rao
always wears khadi as a matter of principle ever since he associated himself
with the movement led by Mahathma for independence. Rao when young rebelled
against his landlord father and was on his own since then. Being a chronic
asthma patient he was not able to follow the cardinal principle of Mahathma
that one should do all his works himself including cleaning the toilet. To keep
this man a Gandhian his wife had to slog from morning till night. One may
recall Sarojini Naidu’s statement that Congress spends a lot to keep Mahatma
poor.
Rao finished his coffee and
was about to go on his rounds to the coconut garden and the paddy fields
inherited by his wife from her foster father a celebrated priest of the
village. Ramanna came rushing and gave Rao the news of Nehru’s death. Rao was
completely devastated and almost fainted. He rushed to the office of local
panchayath where the clerk had already made the huge radio functional. Lauthika
Rathnam’s voice could be heard announcing the sad news followed by the dirge.
In the evening there was a public meeting in the Gandhi Maidan where Rao made a
touching speech moving the entire audience consisting of simple villagers,
government officials, land lords and teachers among others to tears. In the
audience there were also people who were fiercely opposed to policies of Nehru but
on that day they forgot their differences.In such high esteem people held their
prime minister.
Kqaigadi Sankat Krishna Rao’s
son Narain stands in sharp contrast. If the senior Rao was not able to follow
all principles of Gandhi for health reasons Narain’s tastes and habits are
diametrically opposed to that of the mahatma But this does not prevent him
from claiming to have studied Gandhian philosophy and mastered it. If his
father was wearing Khadi till his death, Narain’s dress collection could be the
envy of a corporate honcho although his position in the bank where he works is
not much to talk about. He doesn't touch anything other than Park Avenue even
with a barge pole. The senior Rao’s passion for his mother tongue was such that
in literary circles he was being called the servant of Kannada (Kannadada
Dasayya). In sharp contrast Narain reads, speaks and even may breath also in
the English language of which he claims to be a scholar based on a post
graduate degree given by a distant university, that too through private study.He also often says that if he chose academic as career(He only has to tell who hires pass class post graduates as academics) he would have been in Cambridge or Oxford.In fact what prevented him from doing so was his very poor IQ. Though Rao the senior had all opportunity to settle in Bangalore given his
association with the Sahithya Parishad he chose life as a teacher in his
village doing constant social work whereas Narain at the first opportunity left
the native place, built a comfortable house in an up market area of state
capital equipped with all modern gizmos for life with luxury and settled down there.
Volumes can be written on double standards, chicanery and hypocrisy of Narain.
I will continue to write on that in installments during the days to come.
