Remembering Krishna Menon

The handful of people who still care will mark his 110th birthday on May 3, writes Shashi Tharoor in his latest column devoted to V K Krishna Menon. The man who was seen as Nehru’s blindspot didn’t endear himself with very many other politicians, presumably, because of his reluctance to suffer fools gladly. As Mr Tharoor put it, Krishna Menon’s approach was not calculated to win friends.He died a forgotten backbencher, without even a political party to call his own.

The only visual that comes to mind of his funeral (I was then a newspaper reporter in New Delhi) is that of his body laid out on a truck being surrounded by Madhavan Kutty of Malayala Manorama, Blitz Raghavan (I believe) and a few others.Known for his carping comments the man had a delightful way with words. He was fond of telling his British friends, “You know why the sun didn’t set on their empire? Because God didn’t trust the British in the dark”.

Shashi Tharoor wrote that his father had helped Krishna Menon set up the India Club at The Strand, right across the street from the Indian high commission in London. It was a place where one had masala dosa and tea at prices affordable to young Indian newsmen. The club was also known for serving Southie meal, notably rasam. The cook there, as the story goes, was specially brought by Krishna Menon from Tanjore. Have you heard this one, Mr Tharoor?

Our man in San Francisco

Heads of Indian missions abroad are seen as remote figures, working at reports to South Block from behind closed doors in posh offices. They are usually seen showing up at public 'do's' – R Day flag-hoisting at NRI gatherings, tape-cutting to open an exhibition of works by a visiting artist – and heard holding forth at Indo-So-and-so Friendship Society meeting or a chamber-of-commerce seminar inaugural.

So, it wasn't with much expectation of a response I e-mailed our Consul General in San Francisco Mr B S Prakash on the need for an NRI/consulate initiative to donate desi books/CDs to public libraries in the US. This was a year ago. To my pleasant surprise he promptly mailed back thanking me for my interest, adding that he felt nice hearing from someone from Mysore. Mr Prakash did M A (Philosophy) from Manasa Gangotri and taught at Maharaja's College for a year before joining Indian Foreign Service. In his college days Mr Prakash was a keen debater in Kannada; recalls that among his partners in debating was Shubhachandra, now a professor in Jainology dept., Mysore University (Professor, are you reading this?)Ambassador Prakash(so ranked,in diplomatic hierarchy) admits to being nostalgic about his Mysore connection;his Gangotri days.

More recently, when I drew his attention to a particularly touching tribute to Poornachandra Tejaswi by a 16-year old Bangalore girl, Mr Prakash reminisced – "For me, in the seventies, totally caught up with the magic of navya, Tejeswi's writings were a welcome relief . . . that he was Kuvempu's son, and yet so different was another cause for marvel". I reckon we haven't heard the last word on Tejaswi from Mr Prakash, who runs a column in Rediff.com where he writes on literature, arts and lifestyle.

More articulate among those in our diplomatic corps write on lofty issues pertaining to international relations, global terrorism. Mr Prakash does it as well, for The Hindu edit page. He is equally proficient in writing about his experience in California. Mr Prakash's Rediff.Column gives one an insight into the man, his flair for writing and his mundane interests. He watches "a fair amount of TV, all kinds, movies, series, news, views, sports and scandals".

His recent piece – Get up and get rich – was triggered by a TV show featuring Donald Trump talking money. He can write knowledgeably about Barry Bonds, Bollywood stars. And about A R Rahman – didn't know that he was born in one faith, and a family crisis made him turn to another, making a Dileep kumar, an Allah Rakha Rahman.

Invited to preside over a Stanford University music festival evening when the music maestro was honoured, our envoy did his home work on Rahman. Which gave him material for a Rediff.column, with references about our reigning movie Khans and Rais and popular songs – Chaiya, Chaiya, Taal Se Taal Mila.

Mr Prakash takes in his stride someone using his web-space to take a swipe at the consulate, because no one picked up the phone when he called or many of the consulate e-mail responses are automated. My experience on this has been refreshingly different. Anyway, what has it all to do with Mr Prakash's writings?

Someone else asks, 'As CG, does Mr Prakash have nothing better to do?' He appears to have in mind a stereotype image of a diplomat. I would say the likes of Prakash have an edge over other less well endowed career diplomats. His reputation as a lifestyle writer can only help him widen contacts and give a human face to CG's office that is generally associated with issuing visa, stamping passport extension, and taking care of visiting dignitaries from India.

We have had writers, journalists and poets posted as heads of mission. Poet and essayist Octavio Paz was Maxican ambassador to India, John Freeman (ex-New Statesman) served as the UK high commissioner in New Delhi. Our journalists and columnists have represented India. I can think of three – Prem Bhatia (Kenya), Dr K S Shelvanker (Sweden), Kuldip Nayar (UK).

Cross-posted in Desicritics

Chamarajanagar’s Illinois connection

He was in Shanghai Monday last, Singapore on Wednesday; has a business meeting in Frankfurt Tuesday next. And he is at Chamrarajanagar for the weekend. If asked which one of these places sticks out like a sore thumb, I guess there would be near unanimity on Chamarajanagar, a town that strikes me as dry, dusty, and in a perpectual state of neglect.

I said near-unanimity, because Chamarajanagar is a ‘charm-nagar’ for our man on the move - Dr. Krishna Venkataswamy, Director of Research and Development of GLS Corporation, McHenry, Illinois. He heads, among much else, the company’s R&D facility in China: and he is on the Global Leadership Team for the company’s business operations in Europe and Asia. His responsibilities entail much traveling. And wherever his travels take him – Mumbai, Tokyo, Hong Kong – and, whenever feasible, Dr. Venkataswamy (Venkatesh, to friends) heads home, to Illinois, via his Charm-Nagar.

“I still feel like a boy from a small town who happened to be fortunate in life,” said Venkateh when we met in Mysore during his current whistle-stop chakkar half-way round the world. Venkatesh doesn’t fit in with the swanky pigeon-holed image of a frequent-flyer company executive. With a red bindi on his forehead, and a vintage hairdo that seems to make a fashion statement against the current trend in sporting long, tapering, sideburns, Venkatesh would pass for a Sanskrit scholar or music vidhwan from Agrahara.

It is not just the look, Venkatesh is refreshingly different in his outlook in life as well. He says his passion for science, notably, physics, got him high grades right through to his Ph.D (completed within a record two years and two months). He is a Director of the Distinguished Alumni Board at the University of Florida, and on the Executive Advisory Board for Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey.
.
And it is the same passion for science, not the money, that drives him in his work. Venkatesh is a reputed expert in his specialty - thermoplastic elastomers. He has nearly fifty patents to his credit; has chaired many American and international conferences on Thermoplastic Elastomers. But then this small-town boy still finds time to stay in touch with his school – JSS High School – and his friends from the Chamarajanagar days. He referred to Mallesh, now a professor at Gangotri (Mysore), and Prakash (I believe), a company VP in Bangalore.

By way of a pay-back to his native town, and, as an endearing pretext, if I might add, to keep himself in touch with his humble beginnings, Venkatesh funds a local orphanage and pays for the upkeep of a few needy matriculation students of his school. In life, says Venkatesh, he would have never made it to where he had, if it was not for his late mother, periyappa Ramaswamy Iyer, who stepped in to save his family house from being auctioned when Venkatesh was a schoolboy; his grandpa N S Sundaresa Iyer who funded his education through National College, Bangalore, and IIT Madras (1979 batch); and Dr Krishnamurthy who guided him to take up higher studies in Florida and “showed me the ropes in my early years in the US”. ( Isn’t he the Nanjangud municipal school boy who went to IIT Bombay, and made it big in the US with 100 research papers to his credit ?)

I’m a sakku-moottai, aren’t we all, at times ?

I read with a certain guilt-feeling Lakshmi Ramanan’s latest in Mangayar Malar (Tamil mag.) – Nee Oru Sakku-mootaiya? (Are you a bluff artist?). That hyphenated s-word is a Tamil term for someone adept at making excuses to cover-up a lapse or cope with an embarrassing omission. I have been guilty of resorting to it with Shyamala (which is how we call her), particularly, whenever my wife and I neglected to meet her ailing mother (she is no more) during our occasional Chennai visits.

Lakshmi Ramanan, a prolific Tamil short story and feature writer, is my wife’s cousin. Her parents – Ramasami Iyer and ‘Thirukkural’ Kalyani Mami – had been a great help when we were setting up house in New Delhi in early 70s. At a time when we had no elder relations in Delhi to look up to for advice and guidance Shyamala’s parents were there for us.

I don’t recall the specific excuses I made up, but Shyamala or her IAS husband Mr Ramanan ( who retired as Chief Secretary in Rajasthan) have been decent enough not to challenge me. If anything, they acted as if they believed my cock ‘n’ bull that I invented on the spur of the moment. The pair of them are delightful conversationalists. Shyamala speaks as breezily as she writes.

I don’t get to read much of what she writes (can’t keep pace with her turnover in varied magazines - Mangayar Malar, Kalki, Kalaimagal, Ananda Vikatan, Kumudam Bhakti Spl.). However I recall a piece she did on her grand-father, Venkatsamy Iyer of Chamarajanagar. The reputation he had with all his grandkids (including my wife) was that of a stern person who had firm beliefs about the status of women, and their place in our households. In his reckoning a woman’s place was firmly in the kitchen.

Shyamala happens to be the first female graduate in the family (she passed out from Delhi’s Indraprasth College)in her days. She couldn’t have even thought of becoming a graduate, if her grand-father had lived longer. He died before she joined college. Shyamala recalled that when she once showed him a medal she got in school her granddad asked, “what would you do with a medal?” Education was not for girls, who should focus on marriage and on their work in the kitchen.

Irony was, as Shyamla put it, “I couldn’t have got married to Mr. Ramanan, had my grandfather not died at the time he did”. Mr Ramanan wanted a graduate bride..

What makes Shiva tick

It can now be disclosed that I have a film-making nephew, Shivakumar Ramanathan; and his 40-minute audio-visual creation – The Portent – was screened at a recent festival for niche films in Mumbai. This must come as a revelation for many of those who claim to know Shiva, and this includes his extended family of aunts and uncles and a platoon of cousins. All that they knew till now was that Shiva holds a day job, as a regular guy in a regular company, in Los Angeles.

What was unknown and appreciated even less was his romance with film-making.. Shiva slogs during weekends on things films and filming. He has been doing this double-take in life ever since he moved to LA (was it a decade back, Shiva, or more?). So far as I can gather Shiva Keeps himself in touch with few friends outside his film school circle. He has no family (by which I mean wife and kids). And his mother’s constant concern is that her only son is pushing 34, and still unmarried, maintains a punishing pace of work; and he brushes aside suggestions that it was time he set up family. Shiva puts films first.

Putting films before family is not an idea that a middle-class Iyer mother from a Chennai’s conservative locality (Kotturpuram) can accept. But I reckon my young nephew can’t be faulted for thinking that a wedding could wait till he made his first marriage (with films) work. Now that The Portent has happened, would Shiva reorder his priorities in life? A delegation of his well-wishers – sister, two aunts and a nephew – that returned from the Mumbai film-fest (Shiva couldn’t make it) was pleased with his accomplishment, but had on its mind just one question: ‘What next, Shiva? They didn’t mean his film-making – ‘life’s about other things as well, such as shaadi ‘.

I guess I am getting preachy. Surely,Shiva didn’t send me his DVD to have me psychoanalyze him on the pretext of writing about his film. Speaking of which, Shiva’s 44-minute offering -The Portent – is on paranormal phenomenon, with some blood and bullets thrown in. Violence is not explicit, but is menacingly suggestive. Which heightens effect. My wife, on learning about the theme, didn’t want us to watch the DVD at night.

Visuals are pretty sharp, though I felt the soundtrack of dialogues could do with more clarity. Or was it only me who couldn’t catch the words because of wax in my ear? Speaking of soundtrack I thought slipping in a bit of tabla as background music to some action shots was cool.

The Portent could leave an involved viewer with questions. The film is on Ben Fisher, a medical man troubled by his innate power to see other people’s future, not just of his patients but total strangers He knew what was coming for them in the near future,but couldn’t explain how. Forewarning those facing impending death or violence wasn't always a good idea. He could be implicated. Anyway he was rarely believed by anyone. And he could not do anything to avert the tragedy he knew was waiting to happen.

My two question: 1) Does Ben’s power extend to people living beyond a certain geographical radius? Is there a range limit to his psychic-radar? I mean, could Shiva have given his story an added dimension of a political thriller by granting his lead player the power to see what the future holds for those who live in the White House? The Portent was shot in LA; and I can even identify the locale in some scences - Shiva's studio in an Orange County apartments complex

2) Is Ben’s power limited to predicting violence and deaths alone? Why doesn’t he foresee some nice and pleasant things happening in people’s lives?