In the sunset years of his life — i.e. the early and mid-1940s — Srinivasa Sastri’s physical and mental health remained beleagured. His angina attacks came upon him suddenly and not infrequently. They caused him excruciating chest-pain and breathlessness. In those days in contrast to the present day, medical research had not yet discovered miracle drugs and wonder-pharmaceuticals to attenuate the physical distress caused by cardiac ailments. Also, the continued marginalisation of Sastri by the then political leadership of the Indian Freedom struggle movement (Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Rajaji at the forefront) also made him at times feel mentally distraught.
Sastri however had many other interests, pastimes and passions in life from which he drew tremendous strength and joie de vivre. Books, literature, religion, carnatic music and above all he had a very affectionate and close-knit family support-network provided him constant emotional solace to him. His wife, siblings, sons, daughters and many loving grandson and grand-daughters were always beside him. If ever he found the atmosphere in Mylapore, Madras, getting a little depressive, he was able to move on, go and spend quality time with his extended family living in other salubrious and quieter towns and cities such as Coimbatore and Bangalore. In those tranquil family surroundings Sastri was able to devote his time to the deepest passions in his life — reading great literature, discussing books, having lively conversations with visiting friends and admirers, giving little talks on many a subject, listening to music and if nothing else to do, then simply personal reflection.
DVG (D.V.Gundappa, the prolific Kannada litterateur who was Sastri’s friend and admirer) in a biography wrote about Sastri’s lifestyle during these sunset years in the following pen-portrait (Second essay in D V Gundappa’s magnum-opus “Jnapakachitrashaale” (Volume 6) – “Halavaru Saarvajanikaru”:
QUOTE:
V.S. Srinivasa Sastri’s daily routine in Bangalore was as follows: He got up before 7 in the morning and visited Lal Bagh. He would sit on the shore of the lake or on a bench in the garden. If he had an article in mind, he would dictate it and it was my duty to write it down. This would usually go on for about half an hour or forty five minutes. There were deer housed in front of the place where we usually sat down. He was very eager to see the deer ruminating grass and walking around in the enclosure. He would recite the poem – ‘romanthamākurvati’ from the Śākuntalam (of Kālidāsa) as he watched the deer. He walked around slowly. It was also my duty to stop him from walking very fast and to slow his gait down. At times, when he had lost himself in talking to me, he unconciously accelerated his gait. If he met someone on the way who he could converse with, his speed of walking would go even further up. I had been told that I was to stop him from doing so.
As we took strolls in Lal Bagh different topics would come up for discussion. We often went by the mādhavī creeper present in the garden. He would see that and quote – “Kṣāmakṣāmakapolam…” from Śākuntalam. He would explain how to split the words, parse them and the summary of the poem. He spoke at length about the meaning of the verse. His manner of speaking itself was a huge treat for our ears and hearts. As he explained the meaning, he often quoted phrases and sentences from Sanskrit literature. At times, it turned into a monologue completely in Sanskrit and went on for a few minutes.
We had many such lively conversations during our morning walks and returned home by nine in the morning. By then, the day’s newspaper would have arrived. Sastri would go through the headlines that he felt were imporant and described their content to me. Discussions usually followed during and after his reading of the newspaper. This went on until eleven. He then would have his meal and retire for a siesta.
I would go back to his place by three in the afternoon. By then, his wife Lakshmamma would also have got some free time. We all sat together and had some lively discussions.
Sastri usually read out sections from the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa. His wife, Lakshmamma then would compare what Vālmīki had said with the same sections from the Tamil poet Kamban’s Rāmāyaṇa. She was more familiar with Tamil literature. A conversation regarding the beauty in both poems would ensue. Their study of the Rāmāyaṇa proceeded in a relaxed manner.
“Lakshmi! Read out what Kamban has written in the context of this incident. Let me hear it out”. Though Srinivasa Sastri often claimed it as an excuse, he did not lack knowledge about the Rāmāyaṇa in Tamil at all. He went through the original Rāmāyaṇa in Sanskrit again and again and perhaps he did so all through the day. As he went through the original version of the Epic composed by Vālmīki, he grew curious to see how the other poets had described the same episodes. He would immediately call out for his wife. His beloved wife, Lakshmi would then read the Tamil version of the Rāmāyaṇa out loud and also compare it with the Tamil translation of Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa as rendered by Srinivasa Iyengar. Sastri would then examine in detail the manner in which Kālidāsa had presented the matter and how Bhavabhūti had creatively managed the same episode. Later, he discussed the same with friends who shared interest in the subject. I have been a witness to all this.
By half past four or by five in the evening, Sastri’s other friends visited him. On some days we headed out for a casual stroll to breathe in fresh air. In the beginning we rented a coach and travelled in it to inhale fresh air. Later on, one of our friends brought a car to take us around.
Some evenings, he would hop onto his vehicle and go around the city, visiting places he thought were worth seeing. One such place was the Sugrīva temple located in Balepete. This was a unique thing for Sastri and had greatly kindled his interest. “Oh, He was a close friend of Śrī Rāma and helped him in his dhārmic activities. “Ah! Bangalore has people who remember Sugrīva!”
During the early days of his stay in Bangalore, Sastri was very weak. How should he spend his time? I told him that I would bring a couple of books for him to read. Back then, I was going through the works of the Greek dramatist Sophocles. I was enthusiastic about the work – and I should admit that my enthusiasm was quite high. Being overly enthusiastic about somethings is one of my shortcomings. Sastri’s reply was so impactful that I should note down for eternity –
“Why do I need to read anything new? My old Rāmāyaṇa and works of Shakespeare suffice!”
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Sastri’s passionate love for “Valmiki Ramayana” was legendary indeed. In his last last years, it was perhaps his life breath and it is what really kept him going in spite of both physical and mental fatigue. His love for the “itihaasa” he expressed in these words with intense feeling:
“The Ramayana I hold to be almost without a rival in the world’s literature. Whether we judge by the grandeur of the theme, by the variety of characters portrayed, by the tone of its idealism, of by the appeal that it makes to the devout heart, it ranks, amongst the noblest monuments of poetic genius. To those who cannot read it in the original, I would unhesitatingly recommend resort to translations. Even through media the narrative shines with rich brilliance”.
It was mainly thanks to Sastri’s wholehearted advice to one and all, Indian or foreigner who “cannot read it in the original“… “to resort to translations” just so to be able to appreciate “even through media, the narrative (that) shines with rich brilliance”… which I say to myself made me, in my own life and in my little forays into literature as an essayist, to embrace his recommendation.
It was thanks to Sastri’s many scintillating essays on the Ramayana which I read with great admiration in my middle-aged years that I was able to creatively understand how the “rich brilliance” of the original work of Valmiki could be creatively enjoyed even in translation into English. Despite my knowledge of Sanskrit being no more than a smattering and limited to common usage of a dozen or more Bhagavath Gita shlokas and other verses from stotra works of Vedantic Acharyas like Adi Sankara, Sri Ramanujacharya and Sri Vedanta Desika, I came to still marvel at Valmiki’s Sanskrit as Sastri described it himself in his splendid peroratory style. Through the sheer brilliance of Sastri’s own Ramayana exegeses in scintillating English language, I found myself gradually being able … over the years … to acquaint myself with the beauties of the Maharishi’s Sanskrit poesy as seen through the eyes of Srinivasa Sastry. It never did surprise me, therefore, when later I read somewhere that Sir Winston Churchill and others were said to have been astonished at the “beauty and power of Sastri’s English,” with the Master of Balliol College, A. L. Smith famously remarking, “I never knew that the English language was so beautiful till I heard Sastri speak it”.
Personally, thus, Sastry’s essays and lectures on India’s greatest “itihaasa” brought me much closer to my own cultural roots than I felt I ever did before in life. When in 2016-17, I published my first book of essays “The Unusual Essays of an Unknown Sri Vaishnava”, I made no secret of the fact in telling my readers upfront that many of the essays in my book dealing with themes from the Ramayana were largely influenced by Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastry. One short-story, in fact, that I wrote and published in my book as separate chapter titled “The Fourth Widow of Ayodhya”, was a clear illustration of the deep spell of enchantment that Sastry’s writings had cast upon my own.
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Sastry’s undying love for Valmiki Ramayana was most definitely genetic in origin. It was a legacy of his Vedic ancestry and hence he really did not have to make any great effort to carefully cultivate and nurture it in life.
Sastri was said to be able to quote large passages from Valmiki Ramayana verbatim with apparent ease. By his own account given in his Tamil autobiography, Sastri’s prodigious memory was a matter of surprise even to himself! With no false modesty, and in all humility, he wrote that he could memorise with ease even passages from Milton’ Paradise Lost:
“நான் முதலில் என்னை நினைத்தது போல சாதாரண மனம் கொண்டவன் அல்ல என்பதைக் காண நான் ஆச்சரியமடைந்தேன். பள்ளிக்கூட காலத்தில், மிக வெகு சீக்கிரமாகவே மில்டனின் Paradise Lost எனும் ஆங்கிலக் காவியம் எட்டாவது புத்தகத்துடன் நிறைவடையும் வரையிலும் என்னுள் நன்கு பதிந்து விட்டது. ஆச்சரியமானது என்னவென்றால், நான் படித்ததை நினைவில் வைப்பதற்கு சிலவேளைகளில் முயற்சி செய்யவே வேண்டாம் — அது தானாகவே மனத்தில் பதிந்து விடும்.”
“I was surprised to find that I was not, as I had once thought, a person of ordinary memory. During my school days, Milton’s Paradise Lost, right up to Book VIII, became firmly impressed upon my mind in a remarkably short span of time. What amazed me most was that I often didn’t even have to make a conscious effort to memorize — the words would settle into memory on their own.”
Shankaranarayana Sastri, Srinivasa Sastri’s father was a famous paurāṇika (bard, story teller, raconteur). He delivered story-telling sessions on the Rāmāyaṇa in public. This is how Srinivasa Shastri developed great reverence and love for Rāmāyaṇa–- it was something that had come down to him in his family. He then developed great scholarship in the work of Sanskrit poetry with the use of the English language. Sastri’s ancestors, namely his grandfather, great-grand father and great-great-grandfather were scholars of Veda and Vedānta. They had taken to yatyāśrama (sanyāsa) in their old age and had attained siddhi (Ultimate goal, liberation).
Sastri was the eldest among his siblings. Vasudeva Sastri, Narasimha Sastri and Ramaswami Sastri were his younger brothers. Vasudeva Sastri was an inspector of the schools located in the Bellary region. He was very well educated. Narasimha Shastri worked at co-oprative societies but was well educated too. Ramaswami Sastri worked as one of the Associate Editors of the ‘Hindu’ daily newspaper and was erudite himself.
So, given the family background so steeped in Vedic scholasticism,erudition and Sanskrit learning, Sastri’s love for the Ramayana came perhaps with his birth itself. And it exceeded the great love that he later in life cultivated for Milton and Shakespeare
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Besides the Valmiki Ramayana, there were several other magnificent books and timeless classics that Srinivasa Sastri himself in one of his well-known essays listed out as being his all-time favourites.
“The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius stirred me deeply by their utter sincerity and high-souled philanthropy. Curious as it may seem, Tolstoy took me captive by his The Kingdom of God is within You. I remember how the revelation came on me with a rush”.
Sastri also studied deeply Herbert Spencer’s Sociology and John Stuart Mill’s Subjection of Women, On Liberty, and Three Essays on Natural Religion. He delighted too in the works of T.H.Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics .
“The Iliad and the Ramayana can never die, so say our idealists. The Vedas, we swear, had no beginning and will have no end. Grand conceptions these, which it were vandalism to examine historically or appraise scientifically. To how few of the world’s population of nearly two thousand million do they mean anything? In our own homes they have long ceased to be a direct means of enlightenment…
I would place in this category the great plays of Shakespeare and moving orations like those of Burke. Who can escape the instruction of (Walter) Scott’s novels or the edification of George Eliot’s? Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning go deeper down in your nature and shape it to finer issues”.
On Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Sastri wrote:
“The story is one of the great epics of the world, the events and characters alike are cast in large moulds, and the sensitive reader is instructed, edified, scolded, exhorted, and by every possible means, shaped to be fit for a happier world than he now knows. Out of this vast storehouse of experience and history we carry away just so much wisdom as we are capable of. But there is no one, however exalted, however wise, however powerful, who can leave a study of this book without being summoned with the compelling majesty of supernatural law to the recognition of a more humane code of behaviour and a more altruistic sense of duty. If any one of my readers has not yet read this book, I bid him, with the authority that belongs to age and knowledge of the deeps and shoals of life, to get hold of a copy at once and benefit to the full by the treasures that its pages enshrine.
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In my personal opinion, the greatest gift of the man who was called “Silver-tongued Sastri” to India is contained in his monumental literary legacy he left behind viz. “The Lecture on the Ramayana”. All other achievements that Sastri is credited with in the sphere of politics, international diplomacy, education and the arts all pale into insignificance in comparison to what he delivered as his pièce de résistance, the Lectures,which indeed were virtually his last bow too before his demise in 1946.
V. S. Srinivasa Sastri delivered his celebrated Lectures on the Ramayana in Madras (now Chennai) at the Samskrit Academy. The series began on 5 April 1944 and concluded on 8 November 1944. The initial lectures were part of a small, select gathering, but soon drew much larger crowds as word of their quality and insight spread through the city and region.
Sastri began the Lectures at the behest of his friends and only for the benefit of a small closely-knit circle. It all started in T.R. Venkataramana Shastri’s house. As the people who attended the lectures started inviting their other friends and relatives to join them in the following days, the crowd kept growing. News about the lecture series spread through word of mouth. In the course of a few of his lectures, the audience witnessed Sastri thoroughly immersed in the narratives of the Ramayana. At times, they saw him overcome with emotion as he spoke about the Epic and his voice choked. His eyes filled with tears and he would go silent for a while. The audience that had gathered also then lost themselves in the lecture and felt that their life had found at last some meaning.
So enthralled was the audience by the experience of listening to Sastri’s commentaries on the Ramayana, that a grand concluding ceremony for the series of lectures was organised for the audience to express its thoughts, gratitude and delight in going through the process. The people presented Sastri with a silver plate with letters from a Sanskrit śloka from the original Rāmāyaṇa embossed on it. The śloka was from the episode wherein Rāma meets Āñjaneya for the first time, and having got impressed with his manner of expression, Rama speaks words of appreciation. The audience was also, similarly, overwhelmingly impressed with Sastri’s style of presentation and the śloka was thus so very relevant to the context.
संस्कारक्रमसंपन्नाम् अद्रुतामविलम्बिताम् ।
उच्चारयति कल्याणीं वाचं हृदयहर्षिणीम् ॥
saṃskārakramasaṃpannām adrutāmavilambitām ।
uccārayati kalyāṇīṃ vācaṃ hṛdayaharṣiṇīm ॥
D.V. Gundappa wrote: “There is a school of thought in Indian literary aesthetics which considers Style as the Soul of Poetry – “Rītirātmā Kāvyasya”. This holds true in case of Sastri’s art of expression. His lecture was poetry and the best part was his style of rendition”.
At least thrice in my life so far have I myself read Sastri’s “Lectures on the Ramayana” in full and countless times have I turned to its pages by way of referencing. Each time I have experienced a different kind of delight while savouring the book. Every one of thirty lectures is a masterly dissertation indeed on the Ramayana and the profound lessons on Dharma it is gem-encrusted with.
However, in my opinion, the most enlightening of all the 30 lectures is Lecture No. 15.
(to be continued)
Sudarshan Madabushi