Opinion - News Analysis   

Remembering Raja Rao

K. Natwar Singh

With his passing, India has lost the last of the great trio of its literary world.

— Photo: By Special Arrangement

Raja Rao ... He was worldly in a very unworldly manner.

RAJA RAO — who died in Austin, Texas, on Saturday — and I were both contributors to two books I edited: E.M. Forster: A Tribute and The Legacy of Nehru. Both were published in New York. The Forster book in 1964 and the Nehru one in 1965.

I first heard of Raja Rao from E.M. Forster in 1953. I read Raja Rao's Kanthapura and was enchanted. In his essay on Forster in the Tribute book, Raja Rao narrates an amusing literary episode, involving him and Forster.

In the latter half of 1945, Forster came to India for the third and last time. Raja was also in Bombay. Forster asked a common friend, "Where is Raja Rao ... Where is he hiding?"

Raja writes in his Tribute essay: "The same evening I wrote a letter to Forster ... I have abandoned literature for good — and gone over to metaphysics; I am not a writer any more, I do not know on what grounds I could come to see you. Forster immediately sent me a reply: `You have, you say, abandoned literature for metaphysical inquiry. I have abandoned literature for nothing at all. So please let us meet.'"

I got to know Raja Rao in 1963 in New York. We met at Santha Rama Rau's apartment. We immediately took to each other. Raja had an aura about him, half-sensuous saint, half-sensitive author. I reviewed his novel, The Serpent and the Rope, for The Saturday Review, New York.

I concluded my review by quoting Raja Rao. Soon after the publication of Kanthapura in 1938 he wrote: "One has to convey in a language that is not one's own. One has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain thought movement that looks maltreated ... Our method of expression has to be a dialect ... distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American — Time alone will justify it."

My review ended on a high note. "Time has justified... The Serpent and the Rope is an achievement of a high order; it is also a strange literary experience."

Raja Rao, if I am not mistaken, introduced Jawaharlal Nehru to Andre Malraux in Paris in the early part of 1936. In his tribute in The Legacy of Nehru, Raja Rao describes his encounter with Nehru in Badenweiler in the Black Forest in Germany. Kamala Nehru was in a sanatorium there. Nehru had been released from jail to be with his desperately ill wife. Nehru took Raja Rao to meet Kamala.

The trialogue is both entertaining and memorable. Metaphysics was not Nehru's cup of tea. He asked Raja Rao, "Do you always speak like this?"

I have many letters from Raja Rao. I had undiluted affection and genuine admiration for him. He was worldly in a very unworldly manner, yet he had no mannerisms. He did not write many books, but Kanthapura is a classic.

The first six years of the 21st century have taken away the great trio of our literary world. R.K. Narayan died in 2001 at 94, Mulk Raj Anand in 2004 at 99, and now Raja Rao, at 96. My life is the poorer by their going. The enviable consolation is that they enriched my life in so many ways. I am indeed blessed. Farwell, dear Raja Rao. Your work will endure and so also your memory.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Reclaiming the traditional base
Pyongyang demands attention
Half way to getting it right
The nuclear deal and `minimum deterrence'
Remembering Raja Rao
Traditions, values - and modernity
Violent Islamic radicals know they are heretical
Polish President's twin joins him in a double act
Divestment on hold
Unfortunate
Reservation in jobs

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu