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The Triveni Foundation and members of Late Dr. Bhavaraju Nara­simha Rao’s family wish to convey their grateful thanks to the readers, contributors and well-wishers for writ­ing condolence letters and expressing their support to TRIVENI. It is regret­ted that individual letters could not be addressed to each of them.

The founder editors - Sri Kolav­ennu Ramakotiswara Rao and Dr. Bhavaraju Narasimha Rao - will re­main enthroned in our hearts and they have earned immortality through their selfless services. For such people there is no death. As Robert Graves, the well-known poet, said:

“To bring the dead to life
is no great magic.
Few are wholly dead:
Blow on the dead man’s embers
And a live name will start!�

This of course is well-earned im­mortality. But we find that a large majority of people today seek short-cuts to fame. The craving for fame and the lime light have become a fashionable epidemic. There is none so humble that he does not hunger for a halo round his head by getting a statue erected, an oil painting unveiled or a souvenir released. Particularly those who are innocent of any worthwhile public service and those who do not suffer from any inconvenient idealism are reluctant to drop into obscurity and sink into the merciful arms of oblivion.

John Walcott has rightly ob­served:

“What rage for fame attends both great and small.�
Better be damn’d than mentioned not at all!�

There is none with soul so dead as not to cherish a clandestine desire to perpetuate his memory by some means or the other, by hook or crook.

History, however, mentions some cases of mortals who declared them­selves against such strategic devices to fame. Laying the foundation stone for the National Sports Stadium in New Delhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru disappointed the Committee’s decision to name the stadium after him. He em­phatically said: “I do object to this business of names of living persons being bandied about. Only the dead should be so honoured. No living name, however great should be used to name a place, street, building, insti­tution or anything else. It is a bad habit and once you allow it to spread, it may be that you honour some de­serving persons but then far more un­deserving persons try to perpetuate their memory�. Obviously, he did not realise what was going to happen after him. The epidemic, became endemic.

It seems, many streets in the United States of America were named after Benjamin Franklin, one of the popular Presidents. The people of Franklin town of Massachusetts once wrote him a letter saying “We have named our town after you and we should like a donation of a sum of money from you in order that we may put a bell in the church steeple�. The President wrote with a Shavian thrust: “I am very much honoured, very glad indeed to send you a sum of money. Only don’t buy a bell with it; buy a public library because I have al­ways preferred sense to sound.� Who cares for such ideas today?

When the people of Birmingham proposed to put up a statue to Sir Winston Churchill and wrote for his permission, he refused. He wrote that statues and memorials should not be raised for the living. He must have subsequently revised opinion as senility set in because it was reported that his statue was unveiled by Gen­eral Montgomery. Perhaps it was done without his knowledge.

Many speakers bestowed lavish praise at a meeting arranged in hon­our of Chauncey Dupont. In his reply the honoured chief guest said “It is nice to get these pleasant words while I am alive. I w’d rather have the taffy than the epitaphy.� A gentle rebuke that there is no propriety in praising people when they are still in positions of power outside the grave yard or crematorium. But who would heed such advice? Many of our well-to-do and well - placed contemporaries do cherish an ardent desire to grab fame when they are alive, because they can­not afford to take chances with posterity of doubtful dependability.

The ancient Pharoahs of Egypt had their world - famous Pyramids carefully designed by architects and constructed under their own supervi­sion before they breathed their last. The Romans, we are told, used to bury along with the dead lachrymato­ries - bottles containing the tears of their kith and kin. These vials served as tangible evidence that the dead are mourned by their dear relatives. How­ever, we should not surmise that there are no real cases of genuine sentiment and love. Before Sri Raghupathy Ve­nkata Ratnam Naidu died he wrote in his will that his dead wife’s photo should be placed on his breast and a piece of sandal wood made wet with the tears of the Maharajah of Pithapu­ram (for whom he had fatherly affec­tion) should be put on his heart when his beloved student Dr. V. Rama Krishna Rao set fire to the funeral pyre! What a great wish! It is sym­bolic of the love which is the only thing one is permitted to carry beyond the grave.

Shahjahan, the Mughal mon­arch, built the great Tajmahal on the banks of the Jamuna river at Agra as a magnificent monument in white marble to his beloved queen. That was enough to perpetuate the memory of both, the emperor and the queen, but he was hardly satisfied. He wanted to create another gorgeous monument in black marble on the other bank of the Jamuna exclusively for himself. Of course he died before the wish was ful­filled. Thus we find numberless monuments all over the world constructed by kings and millionaires serving as tourists� attractions. Should we not sympathise with Nero, the Roman emperor, who said while dying “QUALIS ARTIFEX PEREO!� (What an artist dies with me)?

In India sometimes we see the splendour of the multi-millionaires and the squalour of the poor, the col­our of fabric and drabness of the sou1. What is taking shape is a new way of life which has coarsened and desensi­tised our minds and hijacked our cul­ture to a carnival of conspicuous spending which has come to be known as the five-star-hotel culture.

Yet there is light at the end of the tunnel for those who have the pa­tience to grope towards it. There are a few people who do their best to acti­vate, the triple stream of culture, litera­ture and history. Let us strengthen their hands.

I.V. Chalapati Rao
Editor.