Regarding my personal memories of dear Vasu, I vividly recall the Mussorie days when he used to stun me with his idiomatic and high falutin Hindi. I used to rile my friends and ask why it is that no Punjabi is able to speak Tamil with the fluency that Vasu is able to speak in Hindi. And for a Tamilian to offer Hindi as an optional subject in a project as risky as IAS exam, was to me the limit of adventurism or acme of self confidence.
The other lasting memory, again relating to the same subject, comes from our Bharat Darshan days. It was December 1964 – January 1965, he was in the same batch of 20 that I was and when touring the south, probably after our visit to Rameshwaram, we were stranded in Tamil Nadu, I think somewhere near Trichy or Tirunelvelli. Language riots had broken out all over the country and we were in the very thick of Tamil fury and our train was held up at some small station for something close to 24 hours. The platform vendors ran out of all food stuff with a whole train-load of passengers devouring all eatables available on the station. Inside our train compartment, were 20 young men and women constantly debating the pros and cons of Hindi as a national language, and there was my dear friend Vasu declaiming forcefully, in chaste Hindi, against the nefarious designs of the north Indians to foist their language on a proud southern race which would have none of it. A Tamil, speaking in Hindi against Hindi, always reminds me of those lines from Voltaire when defending the freedom of speech “I disagree violently with what you say but I will defend to my death your right to say it!”
The inimitable Vasu!
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