The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Dry humour was his forte

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 24, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Dry humour was his forte

By Dasu Kesava Rao

HYDERABAD, DEC. 24. Another facet of P.V. Narasimha Rao's many-splendoured personality was his sparkling wit.

Many anecdotes about his dry humour do the rounds. This one relates to a seminar in Hyderabad where speakers bemoaned the fate of Telugu language. After listening patiently, Rao assured them "don't worry. Telugu is safe".

"Do you know how India won its freedom?" he asked. Answering it himself, he said one Muthuraman Thevar spoke in English in Parliament.

A British officer, who followed the speech, dashed off a cable to Lord Mountbatten `Sir, It is time to pack up and go. They have started murdering English language'.

"That was why the British ran away," Rao explained to the gathering, leaving them in splits. The English people did not cry foul because somebody was `murdering' it. Likewise, Telugus too should realise that crossflows would enrich the language, not undermine it, he advised.

`Non-resident CM'

Like all other Congress CMs, Rao too was known to make frequent trips to Delhi, earning the sobriquet `non-resident CM'. When asked about his next trip to Delhi, he told journalists `my next trip is to Bombay'.

At an election campaign in Warangal district in 1984, he took the mike after a prolonged speech by T. Hayagrivachari, senior party leader. "So far you heard Hayagrivachari's harikatha. Now hear mine," he told the gathering. He lost the Hanamkonda Lok Sabha seat to BJP's C. Janga Reddy, one of the only two party men to win in the country.

At another meeting in Nandyal in 1991, he likened the Congress to a train. `Some people get in. Some people leave," he said, but people like him stayed with the party through thick and thin.

PV had great respect for his political guru and president of Hyderabad Congress, Swami Ramananda Thirtha. As Chief Minister, he was known to make frequent trips to the busy Koti area to call on his mentor who stayed in a small room above a khadi bhandar. Two other contemporaries and alumni of Nizam College here, Veerendra Patil and S.B. Chavan, were Thirtha's protégés. All the three rose to become Chief Ministers of their States.

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