I stumbled upon three tributes to Raja Rao while looking for information about the Telugu writer G. V. Chalam. That is not true, isn't it? When a friend of mine mentioned about the online existence of excerpts from Chalam's Sasirekha, I wanted to find more about him. I told this to my friend CCG. And CCG told me about this literary e-journal. It was while browsing through the archives that I noticed the three tributes to Raja Rao. Here they are:
"The luminous novelist has passed away on the 8th of July, 2006, at 12.45am. I am told by his wife Susan that he passed away calmly and surrounded by people who loved him. I cannot avoid admitting that I am writing this with a deep sorrow - or dukkha as Raja Rao would call it - affecting my soul. One thing is sure: Raja Rao would never have remained in this world for so long but for the devoted and painstaking care of his adorable wife Susan. In her, he must have found the peace he had been searching for in his novels, as echoes of her personality and character can be heard in Rao's last masterpiece, The Chessmaster and His Moves. She said she still feels his presence so strongly that to her their hearts are one. I could not, therefore, imagine a better person at Rao's bedside at the time of his peaceful death."
"Going to see him would be for me like making a pilgrimage – I wanted to do that in a duly reverential frame of mind...To me Raja Rao seemed like a hermit living in a lonely garret to pursue a higher quest of the mind oblivious of the consumerism that marked American life...(Once) Shamefacedly I brushed them aside as he went on about the divine status of a woman in Indian society. I kept up my end of the debate trying to tell him that a human status would really be quite enough for the time being. But it was an unequal argument because he was charming, erudite and eloquent and I was not only awkward but also in great awe of him...He lived on a higher intellectual and philosophical plane and could easily have dismissed people like me who knew much less and lived in a limited world. But I think it was a measure of his generosity that he had time for even those who disagreed with him. I like to remember him not only as an major writer of the twentieth century but also as a humane individual who had encouraged an unknown young academic many years ago."
It is good to see that Vijayakumar T, in his tribute, mentions Preface to Kanthapura and Kanthapura in one breath. He also writes,
"The Meaning of India is valuable for me because it is an eminently teachable text—at least several essays in it. As many of us know, books that are good to read are not always amenable for teaching in a class room. But The Meaning of India proved to be one partly because of its aphoristic style. Formulations such as "India is not a country (desa), it is a perspective (darsana)" and "it is not the Indian who makes India but 'India' makes the Indian" remained with the students long after they may have forgotten the argument leading to these conclusions."
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