Prof. C D Narasimhaiah, scholar, author, mentor, and a teachers' teacher, died in Bangalroe, at 85 (April 12, 2005)
Was Mysore University English professor (1950-79); Principal, Maharaja's College (1957-62); Founder, 'Dhvanyalok' and the Literary Criterion; and author of numerous works, notably, 'N for Nobody' - autobiography of an English teacher.
A Friend Remembers
He was proud of being a teacher, and never tired of telling that his wish was to be born a teacher, life after life.....A small town shopkeeper's son who learnt English from a village accountant, CDN got educated at the universities of Mysore, Cambridge and Princeton to become a doyen of English literature.
CDN maintained high standards in life - a fine gentleman, always immaculately dressed in suit on formal occasions. He was fond of good life - good food, a 'chota peg' and cigar after a fine meal....a wonderful host, whose dinner invitation was considered an honour and rarely declined by anyone.
- K B Ganapathy, editor, 'Star of Mysore'
Years with RKN
His association with R K Narayaan is part of local folklore. When RKN died , May 2001, CDN had recalled his long walks with the author along Kukkarahalli Lake on Thursdays to submit the manuscripts to The Hindu, which published his weekly articles on Sundays. He considered it a privilege to have discussed with R K Narayan 'The Guide', from its evolution to culmination - 'I was still a student when Narayan published 'Swami and Friends', but by the time he finished 'The Guide' I was professor of English, Maharaja's College. His students recalled that one could totally disagree with him (CDN) and yet remain friends.
"I have to read the book thoroughly before I can speak about". This is what CDN told T S Satyan who went to invite him to release his book 'Alive and Clicking: a memoir by T S Satyan'. This was three days before CDN's death. (The book by veteran photo-journalist Satyan is due for release in May).
Starting his career as a contributor to 'The Illustrated Weekly of India', Satyan's contributions included a photo-feature on CDN - 'A Day in the Life of an English Professor'. Satyan's association with CDN dated back to their student days at the Maharaja's College - 'CDN was my senior by three years'.
Years later, when Satyan moved to New Delhi on assignment to 'Life' Magazine, he recalled fondly a visit by CDN to his Pandara Road flat. "It was an extremely cold winter day. After heavy breakfast I slipped under thick blankets for a second session of sleep when the door bell rang. CDN came in, saying 'here's something for you', and handed over a small bag to my wife. That distinct aroma, speacial to Mysore 'avarekayi', gave the contents away.
I phoned our common friend Sharada Prasad, to announce CDN's presence and his gift from Mysore. 'We've already received our quota,' said he, adding how thoughtful it was of CDN, who always remembered to bring us something we love, every time he came to Delhi.
'CDN 84 - A Tribute' programme was organised by Karnataka Rajya Shaikshanika Jagrithi Vedike in Mysore, May 22, 2005. Among those who spoke was Mangalore University English professor and former CDN student (1954-58), C N Ramachandran.
He said: CDN encouraged a generation of writers to comprehend and explore English literature through local language, which gave rise to men of letters such as U R Ananthamurthy and Mirle Vishwanathaiah. His students appreciated what they learnt from him outside the syllabus. CDN promoted intellectual interaction among students through the literary club he founded. He expresssed disapproval and even got annoyed at students who missed the literary club meeting held every Wednesday
Mysore University Vice-chancellor J Sashidhar Prasad, in his opening remarks, said the best tribute we can pay to CDN was work to restore the prestige of the English department. So dedicated was CDN to English literature that his devotion to teaching it might have given rise to a mistaken belief among some people that he was prejudiced against Kannada.
. My first meeting with CDN, in the early 1960’s, when I came on home leave to Mysore, was propitious. I had entered the Foreign Service and had married a Mysore girl in 1959. He had vaguely heard of me by a curious chance. An obscure anthology published in 1958 in Britain had included two poems I had sent in while abroad. He had seen this anthology and noted my name. I used to see him whenever I came to Mysore on leave between postings. A few years later, about 1968, when I called on him, he suggested that I should talk to students from the English faculty. I was most hesitant, being diffidently aware that I had no qualifications for such an honour. But CDN was persuasive and I was rash: I took up the challenge. The occasion went off tolerably well, thanks to the kindly tolerance of the young audience.
That was the time I came to know U.R. Ananthamurthy, Rajeev Taranath, (who was married to my wife’s elder sister), and some others with literary interests. I also sought the acquaintance of R.K. Narayan, whose novel, "The Guide", highly impressed me. I noted that a movement was brewing in Mysore about literature in Indian languages as against the vogue for the so-called Indo-Anglian writing among the urban literati. Some felt that CDN, with his Cambridge background and training under F.R. Leavis, was less than fair to bhasha writing, especially in Kannada. I was not competent to judge the merits of this controversy, but I always knew that CDN was as Indian as anyone else, someone who had absorbed the best of Cambridge and Princeton without losing his cultural moorings.
Once in two or three years, even on my short visits to Mysore, I would call on Narayan and CDN. On one such trip, around 1980, I was present at a unique conjuncture, where Narayan, CDN and A.K. Ramanujan were gathered together. I wish I had kept a record of their conversation. I only remember that we spoke about the Ramayana. I ventured to air my theory that the epic should be seen as a comparison of fraternal relationships: Rama and his brothers, Ravana and his brothers, Vali and Sugriva. My notion was not taken seriously, but at least it was passed up politely.
I was in London in the early 1970’s and had some literary friends. I learnt of CDN’s work with Prof William Walsh of Leeds University and the recovery of English literatures outside the sceptered isle of Shakespeare. I went to Hong Kong next, and saw the early issues of "The Literary Criterion" quarterly, which CDN had pioneered against continuously formidable odds. I was thrilled when he printed a letter I wrote to him about Indian poetry in English. It was typical of him to give a hand to others, younger persons with a literary bent, but outside academia, prompting them to write. I knew he was an exacting critic of poetry, and so I never sent him the verses I wrote now and then. For him, prose was "the other harmony", more rigorous than free verse or self-indulgent nonsense that sometimes passes for modern poetry.
My most unexpected meeting with CDN was in 1988. It was at the Frankfurt airport. It happened like this. I got a telex at our embassy in Bonn that the Indian Vice-President, Shankar Dayal Sharma, was in transit from Trinidad with a cultural delegation and that I should be at hand to do the honours. I had myself arrived in Bonn hardly a week before, directly on transfer from Tokyo, having been rushed to Germany by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. (He was to make his first official visit to Germany a few days later). I was unfamiliar with the labyrinth of Frankfurt airport, but trusted the German efficiency to see me through. After the Vice President stepped down the gangway, the delegates descended, MP’s, artists, intellectuals and officials. To my delighted surprise, CDN was among them. He was equally surprised to see me there, for he had assumed I was still in Japan. In the VIP lounge, after I had seen to the comfort and telephone calls of the delegates, CDN and I had time for a pleasant chat. CDN liked to tell this story, with the twist that I said I had come from Tokyo to Frankfurt expressly to receive him.
When his memoir, "N for Nobody" was published, he sent me a copy and I reviewed it in "The Pioneer". A couple of years later, in 1995, my wife and I left New Delhi to settle down in Mysore. Dhvanyaloka was a haven and a haunt for us. I loved the conversations we had with CDN and his family, with him seated on his armchair in the airy verandah, surrounded by books and magazines and papers, or in the seminar hall, or in this larger hall for larger meetings.
He cultivated his Indian cultural heritage most assiduously. He developed his own framework for the analysis of new works of art and literature, always grounded in the here-and-now of India. His harked back to Bharata and Anandavardhana for their aesthetics of rasa-dhvani and the concept of sahridaya, not out of chauvinistic atavism, but to articulate norms which should ideally animate creative artists and writers and critics, especially modern Indians I.felt that he had the right ideas when he was among the earliest critics to praise a little known Indian novel published in 1961, not because it was a potential best seller, but because it was thoroughly imbued with a sense of India in its eternally contemporary cultural and philosophical entirety. If I am subjective, I am bolstered by CDN’s judgement, for the novel is "The Silver Pilgrimage" by my father. CDN was not my professor, but a guru for me.
- A. Madhavan, at the programme - 'CDN 84 - a Tribute' , Mysore, May 22, 2005
