Opinion - Letters to the Editor

Down memory lane

Sir, — The rich tributes to Rajaji, `The wisest man in India' by Ramachandra Guha and `Rajaji's unknown collaborator' by Gopal Gandhi (Sunday Magazine, Dec. 22), were not only very moving but made me very nostalgic, taking me down memory lane. Rajaji was a frequent visitor to my late uncle's house, the founding father and legal luminary, Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, and I was deeply impacted by him even as a young child. My father used to admire him for his plain living and high thinking. He was also a close friend of my grand-uncle, Vavilla Venkateswara Sastrulu, himself a savant, philanthropist, apart from being the printer and publisher of Federated India, a weekly publication in English, and Trilinga, a Telugu publication in the stormy days of the freedom struggle. He was the first President of the All-India (Newspaper) Editor's Conference and held Rajaji in not only high esteem but also had great warmth and affection for him. Also as Editor and Publisher of Ramayana, Mahabharata and countless scriptures/granthas including Ayurveda and Astrology, he had many stimulating and lively discussions on the Ramayana and other books with Rajaji and thus were born the easy-to-read Itihasas of Rajaji, published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

Alladi Sarada Balasubramanian,

Hyderabad

Sir, — The article, 'Rajaji's unknown collaborator', makes an interesting reading. It would have been better if the original song in Tamil was also published along with its English translation, so that all of us could understand and recite it in this month of Margazhi.

K. Balakrishnan,

Madurai, T.N.

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