Tribute
Publisher extraordinary
R. PARTHASARATHY
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Ravi Dayal was a man of impeccable courtesy and graciousness who built up an exceptional list of titles.
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PHOTO: OUP ARCHIVES
The consummate Dilliwala: Ravi Dayal in his office.
ONE evening in the spring of 1971, Ravi Dayal asked me over a cup of coffee at Bombelli's in downtown Mumbai whether I would like to work for OUP. And when I said, "Yes, I would," he replied, "Welcome aboard!" Ravi and I had met two years earlier through a mutual friend. When the legendary R.E. Hawkins retired from the Press that year, Charles Lewis came over from OUP East Africa to take charge of the Indian Branch. Ravi was made editor-in-chief. The head office of the Press moved to Delhi later that year — to 2/11, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, inside the old walled city.
I worked for a few months in the Mumbai office in Apollo Bunder, Colaba, where I sat at a desk in Ravi's room, trying to learn the nuts and bolts of editing before being sent to Chennai as an editor. I was struck by his impeccable courtesy and graciousness, and his fine bearing. I was a frequent visitor to his home in New Marine Lines, overlooking the Cross Maidan. On the bookshelf, Philip Mason's The Men Who Ruled India rubbed shoulders with Daniel H.H. Ingalls's An Anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry. A historian by training, first at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and then at University College, Oxford, Ravi had a keen appreciation of the arts. While in Africa, Lewis had published the East African playwrights Robert Serumaga and Ebrahim N. Husseini in his series, "New Drama from Africa". He was keen on winning attention for Indian writers. And so "New Poetry in India," "New Fiction in India," and "New Drama in India" were launched. Ravi oversaw the series, and a team of three editors, which included Nirupam Chatterjee, Samik Bannerjee, and myself, developed it. Writers featured in the series included A.K Ramanujan, Nissim Ezekiel, Raja Rao, U.R. Anantha Murthy, Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, and Girish Karnad.
Dedicated to work
When I moved to Delhi in 1978, I was able to observe Ravi at close quarters. He was usually the first to arrive, between 8.30 and nine in the morning and one of the last to leave, between six and 6.30 in the evening. My office was next to his, and I could not but notice the cluster of scholars who passed in and out of his room — a "Who's Who" of Indian academics. Scholarly publishing was OUP's forte, and Ravi presided over his intellectual family with distinction. Going over an edited typescript with him was an education. Not a comma would be out of place. Authors were grateful for the care and attention he bestowed upon their written words. The published book was a delight to behold. OUP's strength lay in its team of dedicated editors. But editors are a vanishing breed in today's book publishing. Not many years ago, I was horrified to find typos in the opening pages of a Clarendon Press book. The Clarendon Press is OUP's most prestigious imprint; it used to be once the grandest imprint in all of publishing.
When Lewis returned to Oxford in the late 1970s to join the International Division, Ravi took over as general manager. He was the first Indian to hold that office. He was also the last of the editor-managers, a tradition that goes back to E.V. Rieu, who was sent by the Press in 1912 to Mumbai from Balliol College, when he was only 24, to establish the Indian Branch. Ravi too was hired by the Press in his final year at Oxford (1961). Under his stewardship, the Press was increasingly Indianised, though the process had begun with Hawkins and Lewis. The Indian branch produced its own educational and scholarly books written by Indian authors, a venture that changed the face of publishing in India and also proved to be financially profitable This was a major step for the Press which had in the past depended on books imported from Oxford. In 1982, I left OUP and moved to the United States.
Ravi was the consummate Dilliwala. On our occasional walks through the labyrinthine gallis of Daryaganj after a dal-and-roti lunch at the office, he would talk nostalgically about his Mathur Kayastha family's association with the Old City and of his boyhood in Naini Tal and the surrounding hills. There was something of the reclusive scholar about him, and he talked about wanting to write, perhaps even produce a work of scholarship himself. Though that wish remained unfulfilled, one thinks of the galaxy of authors he had helped to nurture at OUP and of the exceptional list that he had built up over a period of some 25 years.
Never one to draw attention to himself, he loathed vulgarity in any form. He wore simple khadi kurtas, trousers, and Pathan chappals, except in winter when he switched to elegant suits. He had almost boyish good looks, with sharp, angular features, and a distinctive nose. If there is one word that sums him up best, that word would be tahzib.
Ravi's place in Indian publishing is secure. The books that he has published will remain his most enduring legacy. It is given only to a few to have touched the lives of so many, and Ravi was one of the chosen few.
R. Parthasarathy was a literary editor with OUP from 1971 to 1982. He received a Sahitya Akademi Prize for his acclaimed translation of the Cilappatikaram (Penguin Classics).
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