In Reminiscent Mood

By. K. RAMAKOTISWARA RAO, EDITOR, ‘TRIVENI’

As I send forth the first number of ‘Triveni’ for the new year, my mind naturally goes to the day on which ‘Triveni’ first saw the light. It was during the Congress week at Madras in December 1927 and exactly at 12 Noon on Christmas Day that ‘Triveni’ was formally published at ‘Malabari House’ Purasawalkum, by my friend and former colleague on the ‘Swarajya,’ Sjt. K. Srinivasan. There was a large and brilliant gathering of friends, and the chair–in fact it was a beautiful carpet prepared by the students of the Jatheeya Kalasala–was occupied by Chavali V. Krishnaiya, a rising lawyer and publicist of Narasaraopet, the place of my birth. Krishnaiya, as I then described him, was "the friend of my boyhood, the companion of my youth, and, in the battle of life, my comrade-in-arms." A versatile scholar and a brilliant speaker, a gentleman of noble impulses and a born leader of men, he was indeed the idol of my heart from my earliest years. But, alas! he was snatched a way ere these gifts could win him his rightful place in the larger life of the land.

For me, the note of joy and of triumph on the completion of an year of strenuous endeavour is stifled when I realize that he who inaugurated ‘Triveni’ is no longer present to guide me and inspire me in my work. Readers of Maratha history might remember how after the capture of the fort of Sinhagad (the lion-fort) Chatrapathi Shivaji exclaimed in sorrow, "the fort is won, but the lion is lost," referring to Tanaje Malusare, the comrade by whose desperate valour the Maratha arms had that day triumphed. Exactly similar is my feeling today. Life can never be the same to me that it was when he was alive. But since ‘Triveni’ is his gift to me, I shall cherish it and make it in an ever-increasing measure a memorial worthy of his idealism. Thus shall I seek to return even a fraction of the love that he lavished on me during life and which I am convinced he continues to lavish on me from the Great Beyond.

Another friend to whom ‘Triveni’ and its Editor were very dear–Andhraratna Gopalakrishnaiya –passed away shortly after the publication of the second number in March last. This hero of a hundred platforms, this sturdy fighter for freedom, had a most tender and loving heart. There are countless young men in South India to whom his death comes as a personal loss. Years ago when he has clapped into jail at Berhampore for disobedience to a gagging order of, the District Magistrate, I felt that "his imprisonment removes for the time being the most popular as well as the most picturesque figure in Andhra public life. To his personal friends, the loss of his genial comradeship cannot be expressed in words." But today it is a loss that is of much longer duration. The grief is therefore much more poignant.

Between him and me there was a strange bond–the bond of failure in a common cause. We both worked for the same institution–the Jatheeya Kalasala–though at different periods. And we both failed to shape it in accordance with our ideals. But there is a realm where such failures are transmuted into triumphs. And that is the realm of ideas, of the "dreams of the virgin soul, and the visions of early youth" of which Mazzini speaks. It is not generally known that Andhraratna was a great lover of the fine arts and collaborated with Dr. Coomaraswamy in the translation of the ‘Abhinaya Darpana’ –‘the Mirror of Gesture.’ In a more peaceful age, he would have made his name has a great savant, but the times were ‘out of joint’ and he felt that he must ‘set it right.’ This is the tragedy of even the noblest lives amongst a subject nation. The struggle for liberty absorbs all the energy and talent that in normal conditions would have enriched the finer aspects of a nation's life. People talk of the great sacrifices of Andhraratna, but assuredly the greatest of them all was the sacrifice which the scholar and the poet made when he turned politician for the sake of a disinherited people.