A Shining Soul of Humanity

A SHINING SOUL OF HUMANITY
Dr. Bhavaraju Narasimha Rao

            (This article is a spontaneous tribute to Dr. Bhavaraju Nara­simha Rao by a TRIVENI Subscriber –Editor)

Saturday November 27th eve­ning, warmly cocooned in a shawl, I was tuned into the evening bulletin of regional news on the AIR. Only a short while ago Indian cricket team had valiantly struggled through the balling session of Hero Cup Final, placing a respectable target before the West Indies team. The newscast was hashing out the usual this and that....My attention wandered off...to what I was reading: Mancini, Morelli, Freud, Holmes; connoisseurship of art, psychoanalysis, crime investigation; three unrelated domains apparently, yet three different functions of the same methods applied in different contexts.....

I came to my orbit with a violent start. A big lurch in the pit of my stomach. The newsreader was droning on - Dr. Bhavaraju Narasimha Rao, editor of TRIVENI Quarterly.... Even before the name was out com­pletely I know it was an obit. A chill gripped my heart. I felt like I had eaten mud - no, worse. I still feel that way.

My acquaintance with Dr. Rao began fairly recently - a year - and - a half ago. Or, spiritually speaking, I should date it another six months perhaps.

In the last quarter of 1991 I was seized with the idea of writing a series of academic papers on detective fic­tion. Immediately I set to work, and in about five months the first paper of the series was ready to go. All along, however, one question was turning in my mind: where to publish these papers? rather, who would accept? Since scholarly study of popular and detective fiction had not yet caught up in our country, I had misgivings about their acceptance, particularly the first two or three papers, which I hadn’t intended to be deeply analytical.

After careful1y sampling the contents I had short listed three jour­nals, one of which was TRIVENI. However, this last-named journal attracted me more. I tried to find the reason for this. The range and scope of its contents had a wider sweep, hence better chance for me. Apart from this practical reason, it didn’t exude the stiff academic posture of the other journals. There was a spiritual bonhomie about it. And the editor’s name rang a faint bell....some nice impression, in the Gandhian con­text......I couldn’t connect. (I still am not able to). Anyway, TRIVENI it was.

In less than twenty days I received the acknowledgement - ex­plaining the delay! I was amazed. My knowledge of editors - I know quiet a few of them - has been that they are a conceited and snobbish lot. They don’t feel obliged to explain or apolo­gize. But here is this editor explaining the delay of twenty days! It inspired great esteem for him in me.

After about four months, I wrote to Dr. Rao again, inquiring after the fate of my copy. The reply was almost immediate. It came within ten days. He wrote that the xerox impression of my copy was very poor and his failing eyesight, in view of the advanced age was causing him difficulty in making it out, so, could I send a better copy > At least particular pages (numbers given) which were too poor? I felt ashamed. The xerox copy was really poor. But I had no problem, even with those pages, and it didn’t occur to me others could have problem with it. Immediately I mailed another copy ­this time a carbon copy making sure it was okay, with apologies.

An editor of such venerable years and high learning, writing to an aspiring scholar - not even a reputed one - with such humble mien! Truly a person of rare human quality. My respect for him went further up.

Some time later the letter of acceptance came. In it he made a request: After sixty years of existence, the journal is now sailing rough weather. Would I please subscribe? He wasn’t selling or peddling or any such cheap doing. He was being candid and honest in a simple and direct manner. I wrote asking for relevant proforma. Not that I could do anything, but an editor myself, I know the pangs of losing a journal.

By now we were in the last quarter of 1992, and working simul­taneously I got ready two more papers. One I mailed to TRIVENI and the other to a journal named by every professor I had consulted. (One year has passed and to this date I didn’t get even an acknowledgement, even after repeated reminders.)

Dr. Rao sent me the proforma and intimated TRIVENI would be shifting to Hyderabad shortly. I de­cided I would call on Dr. Rao after the shifting and give the cheque person­ally, and shelved it till then. But a few weeks later my contributor’s copy came from the old place. I inquired and got the reply that there was some delay and is likely to be over by end of following month.

After that for a long while I was caught in despairing circumstances. A leaden inertia pervaded my spirit. I didn’t forget the promise but had no will to act. Even my next paper got stuck halfway through, then some­thing jolted me out of that bleakhouse. I dashed off a letter to Dr. Rao’s old address knowing it would be redirected in case of shifting. Also I finished the first draft of the stuck paper, that was about mid-1993. The sunny spell didn’t last. I again fell prey to morbid weather. Even Dr. Rao’s reply from a local address didn’t perk me up. My promise was pinching me constantly, but there simply wasn’t enough moral force to spring me into action.

Then recently before Diwali: I was reading - more by force of habit without focusing K.R. Srinivasa Iyen­gar’s essays on Indian English poets. Poetry affects me strangely - it goes to my soul. As I read the excerpts I thought some of my poems were equally good and some better. I started wondering. How long since I’d written a poem? what’s happened to my spirit? why not try now? K.R.’s essays are good stimulants and, Diwali, just round the corner, a wonderful subject.

I had some trouble getting into the right frame of mind from my gloomy cavity. That done, I got the poem ready in less than an hour. A two-stanza affair. The gloom broken, things crowded the mind. Dr. Rao and my promise to meet him with a cheque was the first thought. I was terribly ashamed of my conduct. I quickly reviewed my position and saw that I couldn’t do a thing till the end of November. I cannot take a hectic schedule or else my arthritic bones would yell in revolt. My sense of guilt was so intense now I couldn’t face him with the cheque. I felt I could redeem my sense of dignity somewhat by mailing the cheque first. That would give me courage to visit him.

The poem too I enclosed with the cheque as a Diwali compliment and mailed it with a short note about my morbid circumstances and my sense ofguilt. A week after Diwali his reply came. Thanking for the cheque in his candid way. Then he expressed con­cern over my morbid state. Would I please direct him how he could reach me (he wasn’t yet familiar with the city) so that he could call on me and talk with me and see what he can do to help me out of the rut. I was thrilled. Usually kindness, where we do see it, is coupled with condescension, contempt, arrogance, etc. But here is kindness unsullied, made rich with affection. It was as though the purity of his soul glowed through the paper of the letter. Tears welled up in my eyes. Such unstinted humanness, in these callous times?

I started mentally preparing myself for the meeting with him, which I tentatively fixed for the first weekend of December. A new paper, a very short one, was taking shape in my mind, and this I was hurrying to complete so that I could take it with me.

The effect of the letter was so strong that I could not pen a reply immediately. It took me a few days to gather my feelings and then I could only barely manage to communicate, and requested somebody to drop it in the box, immediately, please.

(But invariably, he forgot and dropped it a couple of days later. By then it was too late. I am deprived of the pleasure of one last word from him, or even the satisfaction of knowing that my feelings had reached him while the light was still on.)

And then, this news came - like a bolt, breaking me, shattering my bubble of joy. That this should happen now, just when I am on the verge of meeting him at last! I didn’t have the courage to see his mortal remains. What I couldn’t see while the light was shining, I could not bear to see when it was out.

Oh, I knew it all along. He was an actogenarian (almost) and was in line for the take-off. But - so sudd­enly? I feel cheated, maliciously tricked, by some cruel prankster.

He was no kinsman of mine. Not father, nor grandfather, not even a close colleague or an old fellow or long teacher. I never once met him and knew next to nothing about him. Yet my sense or loss and desolation is so deep, no way I could account for it. I feel truly bereaved, as though I have lost my guiding angel, leaving me spiritually orphaned.

May his soul rest in peace and shine benignly on us of the mortal world.

Om Shantih!