Narain's Hypocrisy

(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.