I spent a substantial part of my leisure-time last week reading Tamil books. One such was the collection of articles by Va Ve Su Iyer (compiled by Pe Su Mani). It throws new light on an altogether different aspect of that great freedom fighter. He was an erudite scholar, being fluent in more languages than one. He had digested the best of works in Sanskrit, Tamil and English. In one of his essays he lists out the books that one should read and digest. I will try to give a gist of Va Ve Su Iyer's recommendation. In view of space limitation, I have abridged it, to my taste!

"When you think of epics, your mind rushes to the gardens of Olympia, the cities of London, Athens, Paris, Madrid and Rome, the Ashram of Kanva, the penance- woods of Valmiki, the abode of Juliet, the war-zone of Orosius, the ten wakeful nights of Boccacio and the pilgrims of Chaucer. If you want to enlarge your mind and outlook, read the Vedas and Upanishads, the divine verses of Nammalwar, the Thevarams of Appar, the Job of the jews, the songs of Solomon, the Testaments, the Revelation, the works of Prophet Mohamed, Guru Gobind Sing, the Buddha, Mahaveer, the Bhagavatha and Zoraster. Among epic Dramas, one should digest Ramayana, Bharatha, Silappadhikaaram, Manimekhalai, Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, the Lusiads, the Jerusalem Liberated, Paradise Lost and the works of Aristotle. Among the Darmas of bravery and valour are those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Corneille, Racine, Alfieri, Calderon, Goethe, Schiller, Feltcher and of course, Shakespeare. Among comedies, one should read those of Aristophanes, Moliere, Goldsmith and Sheridan. And there are others like Night Thoughts of Edward Young, Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, the Task of William Cowper, Vanity of Human Wishes of Dr. Johnson, Elegy of Thomas Gray, Meghasandesam of Kalidasa, the Rubaiyat of Omer Khayyam, The Seasons of James Thomson, and Excursion of Wordsworth. Then you have the Thruvalluvar, Bacon, Confucius, Lao-tzu, Kabir and Emerson...

The list is almost unending. I would rather stop here, not before what the great thinker and Tamil writer Va Ra had to say. "Among freedom fighters, I can say without fear of contradiction that one cannot find another voracious reader like Iyer."

While on the subject of freedom fighters, I have some information to share. Governor of West Bengal and grandson of Gandhiji and Rajaji, Gopalakrishna Gandhi delivered a wonderful speech at the Satyamurty Foundation function sometime back in Chennai. The speech was in the form of a letter to Satyamurty! Towards the end of the letter, he says:

"You can see within our Swaraj, Sir, several smaller forms of Swaraj, and they are bewildering.

Arising from our one freedom, many freedoms compete with each other. A 'satya' exists for someone or the other, in each segmented freedom or its aspiration. K R Narayanan famously said to Gandhiji in 1945 that the choice between violence and non-violence, right and wrong, truth and untruth, is simple. But, he said, it is when the choice is between one right and another right, one truth and another truth, that difficulty arises.

People are ready to give their lives for their segment of the Truth. Sacrifice, consequently, has also become fragmented.

Each broken piece of the mirror carries a face. One person adores it; another fears it.

Suspicion replaces trust, conflict unseats cooperation.

Time has so shrunk, the knit of competition is now so tight and the scramble for rights so intense that victories are celebrated with aorta-bursting abandon. But is the joy at one's own victory or at the opponent's defeat? The era of contending without wrangling, competing without envy, racing without tripping the competitor seems gone. Success is snatched, not attained.

I can now read another question in your thoughts: 'Are you not overbalancing the positive with the negatives?' Well, as you know, Sir, being partially of Sri Vaishnava stock, I tend to see the duality of things."

Our leaders are almost inaccessible, especially to the party workers, who employ ingenious and imaginative techniques and means to attract their leader's attention. I happened to read an ad in Thuglak Tamil Weekly (9 7 '08). I will attempt a free translation of the Tamil ad.

"In the event of my being blessed with the opportunity of an audience with our permanent leader Dr Puratchi Thalaivi, I would submit, with gratitude and humility, the following proposals which would fetch success to our party in all the forty parliamentary constituencies: 1. A welfare scheme for those above eighteen years of age. 2. A welfare scheme for the merchants and industrialists who remit several kinds of taxes and duties to the Tamil Nadu Government. ----SBS Azeem, AIADMK worker" He has also provided his mobile number and email ID - in case the party leadership chooses to get in touch with him!!

H Ramakrishnan