VENKATARAMANI:
THE LAST DAYS
By K.
CHANDRASEKHARAN
Unlike
other countries where the lives of poets are fairly well known, India has no
chronicled record of her great poets of the past. Rather, the people of India
loved to fancy stories of poets born of this land than rely on accurate records
of the facts of their lives, their joys and their sufferings. Perhaps
a deep significance also can be discovered in this total indifference to the
actual facts of poet’s lives and the attraction for unusual events concerning
the birth of poesy very often in them. One very captivating reason has been
attributed for this strange habit in us by Tagore, when he said that our people
cared more for poetic accuracies and realities than the factual points in the
lives of poets, because of the true inwardness which such fancies might provide
for our better understanding of them. Thus he would point out how much more
real a story such as the one of the birth of metre in the Adi Kavi
(Valmiki) would strike a heart thirsting for knowledge of the true nature of a
poet than even data of the type we may get of the normal happenings in his life
as a man.
A
further reason also may be given for the eschewal of dreary details of a poet’s
life. If a poet’s character and integrity of soul are not enshrined in his
works, there is no need for us to know aught else regarding him. Every other
thing in his life will only have a secondary importance in our attempt at
estimating him. Sometimes one would even wish for a total eclipse of his life, if
those incidents of his existence do not add to our interest in him.
Indeed,
we do not know exactly for what reason in our country much of the life of a
poet has become obscure to posterity. If at all there was any vital basis for
it, it must be that the true inwardness of a poet is only visible in his poetry
and not in the incidents of his mundane existence. True also, sometimes we get
a feeling of depression if we become aware of the sufferings to which poets
might have been subjected. The serenity sought in their works too may be lost
in the craze for information regarding the exaltations and disappointments in
their actual living.
At
any rate one wishes a curtain to be drawn over the last days of Venkataramani.
The cruel disease of consumption preying upon him for five
years or more before his death, did more havoc to erase the true venkataramani
from those who knew him in the plenitude of his vivacity and delightful
powers of conversation. Even long before he had reached sixty, there were
evident signs of his decline. Despite his will to overcome the fatigue of train
journeys, the long trips he made to New Delhi and other places in the North
drained his vital energies. If sometimes one saw him almost on the verge of a
collapse for want of breath, the reader can imagine how much he should have
suffered inwardly on account of the dreadful disease. Yet his continual effort
to look normal was a symbol of his bravery and heroism in an unsympthetic world.
On
the occasion of the religious ceremonies in connection with his
Shashtyabdapoorti in his own dearly loved Kaveripoompattinam, he was just like
a king of the place trying to dispense his bounty to all he received as guests
at the function. The zest with which he asked them to partake of every little
delicacy and dainty dish, the natural pride with which he distributed green
coconuts to the visitors and commanded his own servants to peel off the covers
to allow them to drink of the juicy liquid inside, the courtesy with which he
made everyone alive to the fact that he was present at a place where the sacred
Kaveri mingled her waters with the sea, and the paternal liberty he took in
chiding his only boy for forgetting any of the formalities he should show on an
occasion like that–all gave those gathered there an old-world sense of
punctiliousness in ceremonious behaviour.
At
the public meeting in Madras to honour him with a purse, everyone of his
admirers felt deeply moved at his frail figure making a final attempt at public
speaking. No doubt his voice was feeble but his facile speech and easy delivery
of words marked him out as much an able and forceful speaker as a writer in a
foreign language. That day his was the most significant utterance True, he gave
his considered findings on the condition of our present society and politics. A
new testament of his reading of life is contained in that last memorable speech
of his.
Then
followed soul-depressing days, when he had to remain confined to bed like a
bird clipped of its wings. At Tambaram for a few months he had to reconcile
himself to the situation of being a turbercular patient, putting up with all
the impossible directions of doctors and solicitous friends. His spirit really
felt confined, cribbed and cabined. Frequently letters in his own somewhat
undecipherable hand began to flow from his pen to all he wanted to
contact during his illness. Never once did he give way to despair or weakness
of the kind we generally associate with bedridden patients.
Of course doctors were saying it was the nature of the dire disease never to
depress its victim in spirit. Still it was no ordinary wonder how he kept
himself above breakdowns. His letters always breathed an optimism, the like of
which is not met with elsewhere: The pathetic aspect of it was, he even spoke
of his determination to write his autobiography wherein some of his own dear
friends would appear prominently. Had he lived longer, perhaps his resolve to
write might have given the world a new type of autobiography conserving in its
pages all that is rich and original in a mind stocked with delicate poetic
conceits and images.
One
cannot forget Venktaramani’s extreme sense of concern for people who visited
him during his illness. It is quite unusual for a tubercular patient,
requesting the visitors of his own accord not to near his bed when they tried
to talk with him. He even forbade sometimes a friend, who wished to stay with
him a little longer than usual, not to do so, because he had
his own inner sensitivity that the infection might catch him. Rather strange indeed
in a patient suffering from that particular disease to have
shown so much of a rare detachment.
As
days passed on, he slowly began to lose his will-power. He talked of the duty
of friends to see that his books were given a new lease of life in the shape of
fresh editions. He even suggested the writing of a good account of himself by
one of his truly understanding friends. Again, even that desire spent itself
out. For he called people to his side and told them only to take care of his
boy. It was excruciating pain to find the spirit which never would accept
defeat, showing clear traces of the inevitable end to all things belonging to
this world.
He
removed himself to Mylapore which he deliberately chose as the place of his
mortal freight’s final consignment to the flames. Just on the last day of his
agonising condition, when the breath was struggling its last to liberate itself
from the coils of mortality, he opened his eyes once to take farewell of a
friend whose name was mercilessly pronounced to him even in those ebbing
moments. The last look of leave-taking drew only repressed tears from the
onlooker of that saddening end of what was Venkataramani.
He
never stinted in his payments of doctors’ bills. And he wished not to leave to
his only heir a legacy of his own indiscretions in financial matters. Alas! the
world is not too kind to those who leave their kin in difficulties. He knew
what dire fate would overtake his near and dear ones, should he
leave them in utter want. He was wise in not completely liquidating his
resources.
If
Venkataramani were to be remembered by later generations the main facts of his
life could be told briefly thus: Here was one who was imbued with the best
traditions of a true Hindu, and in himself embodied a type of spiritual
approach to all our modern problems through prescriptions that partook of the
wisdom of the sages of our Upanishads and Epics.
Long,
long will it take for us to realise that Venkataramani can have no true
literary successor here, He stood strangely alone in the originality of his
thought and style. His mixed metaphors occasionally came in for some criticism.
But it could not be helped. Every picture and phrase of a poet cannot be
grasped by those living in the present age. Some of his profundity may be grasped
only by a future generation. For his writings are not only of today but of many
tomorrows.