The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1/M. Subbarayadu
IV
M. SUBBARAYADU.
( 1918 )
Gentlemen, We are here in the shadow of a tremendous calamity. With the sense of heaviness oppressing the heart, it is literally impossible for anything like an appreciable expression of all that one feels on an occasion like this. Nothing is so arresting to the thought and aching to the heart as the sudden and unexpected elimination of a most promising and widely beloved person. If in the course of nature the relief of death comes to one who has passed through the ordinary career of life, though the eye may fill and the bosom may heave, yet there is the prayer in the soul that at last the translation from here to hereafter has come to one rightly prepared for it. But in a case like this, where there was so much to do, where the potentialities were so rich and the promises so inspiring, we really feel it a shockingly great blow that has come too suddenly. It is like a bolt from the blue. Yet, as we have just been rightly reminded, under the oppression of heavy sorrow we owe it as a duty to ourselves, as well as to those whom the loss so dreadfully and terribly crushes, that we should express the very meagre and inadequate but none the less very hearty sympathy due to them.
It has been my melancholy privilege to have known the deceased for a longer period than almost every one else with perhaps the exception of him who has been these eleven years and more his chum in company and his yoke-fellow in office—I mean, the Assistant Dewan. My knowledge of and love for Mokkapati Subbarayadu date back to 1894, when he was a student of the Fifth Form in the School Department of Noble College at Masulipatam. He drew my attention first on an occasion which was rather the reverse of this one, when we were giving an affectionate send-off to one of my colleagues going out on furlough. Subbarayadu, with his instinctive aptitude for Telugu verse, though yet in his teens, a student of the Fifth Form, came out with some Telugu verses which were very touching, characteristically closing with a humorous verse. The humour of it lay in this. The language was English, and the characters were Telugu. It threw us all into bursts of laughter, and I naturally asked myself who the lad was that contained so much humour in him. This was the beginning of our mutual acquaintance. The next year he came into the Sixth Form—the lowest class which I was teaching. He gradually worked his way up to the B. A. when I left the Institution. He was somehow not noted for industry at that time. He did not do justice to himself in the University career, as judged by the ‘results’. To every one who knew him it was quite patent that his talents were of a high order. He passed his examinations with ease, with so little of what the world calls industry; and in this lies the proof of great intellect. To all who knew him it was a disappointment that he did not get a first class in the Matriculation or F. A.; and some of the disappointment was attributed to me that I was drawing him away from the sole duty of a student—confinement to books. I always felt that the days of one’s education at school or college ought not to be wholly devoted to book-lore and that there should be strenuous efforts in acquiring knowledge and laying in ideas and judgments which in after-life would help the personality to develop in different directions. It is interesting how a student occupied in a diversity of pursuits passed his examinations and went up to the highest class without the least hitch. In the B. A. he topped the list in English in the whole of the Northern Circars and was awarded the MacDonald Gold Medal. In Telugu, he was known to be, of course as may very well be expected of a member of Mokkapati family, a Telugu scholar. With him Telugu scholarship was a hereditary acquisition and not a personal accomplishment. We all know how his family is noted for scholarship in these parts and a grand-uncle of his had the renown of being cyclopaedic in Sanskrit lore.
Subbarayadu kept up his studies even after the B. A. and acquired knowledge in other directions. So far as his arduous official labours permitted, he spared no pains to improve himself. He had a respectable knowledge of English literature. But in the realm of thought and sentiment, he was easily familiar with a Martineau or a Maeter-linck, not with the bookish acquaintance of one who reads and remembers, but with the spirit and affinity of one who studies and assimilates. Equally keen was his intellect on subjects relating to the historic and economic questions of the day. Any one who had occasion to draw him out on these subjects would have surely known how wide his acquaintance was in these directions. More than his talents, what struck any person that had any capacity to see beneath the surface was his superior order of development in the moral realm. It is a truism that greatness in morality lies in the comprehensiveness, so to speak, complexity, of character. It is not in undue development in one direction, be it of honesty or of purity or of veracity, that moral greatness consists, but in a comprehensive, all-inclusive development of the various cardinal virtues. It is in this many-sided moral development that the moral greatness of an admirable human being lies. Though it may sound paradoxical, yet it is true that in Subbarayadu’s character the chief and most distinguishable point is the reconciliation of apparent contraries. How to be stem and yet sympathetic, how to be just and yet merciful, how to be keen and yet forgiving, how to be honest and yet recognise human weakness—it is in the reconciliation of these contraries that a man’s greatness lies. One may be stern as duty and tender as sympathy, both simultaneously. That is the enviable privilege of a chosen few in whom shines a ray of the central Luminary of all souls. There are really some in whom the Divine dwells. They serve not merely as towering pinnacles of admiration to lower natures but as examples that provoke imitation and emulation.
My dear old pupil and friend had a wonderful combination of keen intellect. tender Eentiment and stern will. If he I be firm, he could not be moved. If sym; was deserved, he rendered it not m unsolicited but at times unexpected, was necessary that intellect should be ap he did it with unsparing rigour to the ini gation of a question with searching scr and persistenc)^ It may be said of hi: some of you, may remember an English said with profound patriotism aboiit tlie Thames, that he was
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It is this capacity to come ui) to a h standard and yet subdue all in his appli( to the daily round of duties that const: a worthy public servant as well as a friend. No wonder, then, that Sree Garu has described him as a remar person, a distinguished officer and a v friend. As for myself, I used to fee wonder many a time and oft how one : close attention was demanded by the momentous concerns of a great Estate like this could, nevertheless, remember those small concerns, minor details and little points which often, even with those who have not so much of preoccupation, so readily escape recollection. I never wrote a letter even on the most trifling matters but got a reply in due course. This capacity for varied and multifarious work which, according to some great thinkers, as the characteristic of genius was one of the distinguishing features of Subbarayadu also.
Whoever thought a life so pregnant with the possibilities of incalculable worth and unimaginable development would be thus cut short! I do not know how, but somehow feel that, after all, he was a martyr to his own sense of duty. He never spared himself. A single holiday he never knew. Leisure under any conditions he would not tolerate. Work was the very breath of his life. How to further the interests of the Estate, how to serve the best interests of him who stood in the triple relationship of the pupil whom ho had trained, the master whom he served and the friend whom he always consulted—this one all-engrossing subject so occupied the whole mind that he denied himself the ordinary necessaries and bare requirements of a healthy and comfortable life. In him is once again found an illustration of the universal truth that in this world nothing can be done, no results realised and no work begun except through self-sacrifice. He was a most exemplary instance of self-sacrifice. I knew him as a boy, watched him as an adult, walked with him as a companion, prayed for him as one of his well-wishers, took his counsel as one who trusted in him. And I feel that to have commanded the regard, won the affection, and kept the confidence, of one like Subbarayadu is one of the greatest prizes of one’s life. Unto the Estate the loss is simply incalculably heavy. I know so little of the inner details of the administration of the Estate. But having had the friendship of persons who were intimate friends of the Dewan and the Rajah, I have often been led to ask myself, ‘If at any time there should be an occasion even for a sort period of a year or so for Subbarayadu to stand aloof from the system of the administration, how could it go on?’ He was not merely the motive-power that gave the impetus in all directions, but also the inspiring grace which gave life and, what is more than life, the sense of devout attachment to all that are concerned in the Estate. Therefore, the less is tremendous and we do feel that it is not possible, at any rate in the near future, to replace him who has left us so suddenly. Somehow, I have a belief, a belief that is quite justified to my individual soul, that man is not merely flesh and blood, not even this wonderful machinery which thinks and feels and wills and acts; but what vitally endures is the ever-expanding being, beginning as a personality, growing as a reality and Culminating as a glory. I therefore feel that, though the physical body is withdrawn, the vital, essential being perseveres and is for ever perpetuated and though to the physical eye he is withdrawn, to the feeling heart and to the affectionate spirit his companionship is not merely not cut off but will be vouch-safed in an increasing degree in the advancing years before us. Whether physically present or abiding in spirit, he is not lost to the Pithapuram Estate, not lost to us. That his spirit will be blessed with perpetual peace and abundant happiness there is absolutely no doubt. That good can ever fail and God can ever be foiled—that is impossible. He must grow in the bosom of Eternal Goodness from strength to strength, from glory to glory and from bliss to bliss. And as he thus grows, I do believe in an increasing measure that the influence felt by all those that had the privilege of coming into contact with him and his spirit will continue to work on them for good. With this hope and this faltering expression of the worth of my very dear old pupil and ever-valued friend, I invite you all to join in expressing our sincere condolences to the bereaved family and the much afflicted Rajah.