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Unlike other countries where the lives of poets are fairly well known, India has no chronicled record of her great poets of the past. Rather, the people of India loved to fancy stories of poets born of this land than rely on accurate records of the facts of their lives, their joys and their sufferings. Perhaps a deep significance also can be discovered in this total indifference to the actual facts of poet鈥檚 lives and the attraction for unusual events concerning the birth of poesy very often in them. One very captivating reason has been attributed for this strange habit in us by Tagore, when he said that our people cared more for poetic accuracies and realities than the factual points in the lives of poets, because of the true inwardness which such fancies might provide for our better understanding of them. Thus he would point out how much more real a story such as the one of the birth of metre in the Adi Kavi (Valmiki) would strike a heart thirsting for knowledge of the true nature of a poet than even data of the type we may get of the normal happenings in his life as a man.

A further reason also may be given for the eschewal of dreary details of a poet鈥檚 life. If a poet鈥檚 character and integrity of soul are not enshrined in his works, there is no need for us to know aught else regarding him. Every other thing in his life will only have a secondary importance in our attempt at estimating him. Sometimes one would even wish for a total eclipse of his life, if those incidents of his existence do not add to our interest in him.

Indeed, we do not know exactly for what reason in our country much of the life of a poet has become obscure to posterity. If at all there was any vital basis for it, it must be that the true inwardness of a poet is only visible in his poetry and not in the incidents of his mundane existence. True also, sometimes we get a feeling of depression if we become aware of the sufferings to which poets might have been subjected. The serenity sought in their works too may be lost in the craze for information regarding the exaltations and disappointments in their actual living.

At any rate one wishes a curtain to be drawn over the last days ofVenkataramani. The cruel disease of consumption preying upon him for five years or more before his death, did more havoc to erase the true venkataramani from those who knew him in the plenitude ofhis vivacity and delightful powers of conversation. Even long before he had reached sixty, there were evident signs of his decline. Despite his will to overcome the fatigue of train journeys, the long trips he made to New Delhi and other places in the North drained his vital energies. If sometimes one saw him almost on the verge of a collapse for want of breath, the reader can imagine how much he should have suffered inwardly on account of the dreadful disease. Yet his continual effort to look normal was a symbol of his bravery and heroism in an unsympthetic world.

On the occasion of the religious ceremonies in connection with his Shashtyabdapoorti in his own dearly loved Kaveripoompattinam, he was just like a king of the place trying to dispense his bounty to all he received as guests at the function. The zest with which he asked them to partake of every little delicacy and dainty dish, the natural pride with which he distributed green coconuts to the visitors and commanded his own servants to peel off the covers to allow them to drink of the juicy liquid inside, the courtesy with which he made everyone alive to the fact that he was present at a place where the sacred Kaveri mingled her waters with the sea, and the paternal liberty he took in chiding his only boy for forgetting any of the formalities he should show on an occasion like that鈥揳ll gave those gathered there an old-world sense of punctiliousness in ceremonious behaviour.

At the public meeting in Madras to honour him with a purse, everyone of his admirers felt deeply moved at his frail figure making a final attempt at public speaking. No doubt his voice was feeble but his facile speech and easy delivery of words marked him out as much an able and forceful speaker as a writer in a foreign language. That day his was the most significant utterance True, he gave his considered findings on the condition of our present society and politics. A new testament of his reading of life is contained in that last memorable speech of his.

Then followed soul-depressing days, when he had to remain confined to bed like a bird clipped of its wings. At Tambaram for a few months he had to reconcile himself to the situation of being a turbercular patient, putting up with all the impossible directions of doctors and solicitous friends. His spirit really felt confined, cribbed and cabined. Frequently letters in his own somewhat undecipherable hand began to flow from his pen to all he wanted to contact during his illness. Never once did he give way to despair or weakness of the kind we generally associate with bedridden patients. Of course doctors were saying it was the nature of the dire disease never to depress its victim in spirit. Still it was no ordinary wonder how he kept himself above breakdowns. His letters always breathed an optimism, the like of which is not met with elsewhere: The pathetic aspect of it was, he even spoke of his determination to write his autobiography wherein some of his own dear friends would appear prominently. Had he lived longer, perhaps his resolve to write might have given the world a new type of autobiography conserving in its pages all that is rich and original in a mind stocked with delicate poetic conceits and images.

One cannot forget Venktaramani鈥檚 extreme sense of concern for people who visited him during his illness. It is quite unusual for a tubercular patient, requesting the visitors of his own accord not to near his bed when they tried to talk with him. He even forbade sometimes a friend, who wished to stay with him a little longer than usual, not to do so, because he had his own inner sensitivity that the infection might catch him. Rather strange indeed in a patient suffering from that particular disease to have shown so much of a rare detachment.

As days passed on, he slowly began to lose his will-power. He talked of the duty of friends to see that his books were given a new lease of life in the shape of fresh editions. He even suggested the writing of a good account of himself by one of his truly understanding friends. Again, even that desire spent itself out. For he called people to his side and told them only to take care of his boy. It was excruciating pain to find the spirit which never would accept defeat, showing clear traces of the inevitable end to all things belonging to this world.

He removed himself to Mylapore which he deliberately chose as the place of his mortal freight鈥檚 final consignment to the flames. Just on the last day of his agonising condition, when the breath was struggling its last to liberate itself from the coils of mortality, he opened his eyes once to take farewell of a friend whose name was mercilessly pronounced to him even in those ebbing moments. The last look of leave-taking drew only repressed tears from the onlooker of that saddening end of what was Venkataramani.

He never stinted in his payments of doctors鈥� bills. And he wished not to leave to his only heir a legacy of his own indiscretions in financial matters. Alas! the world is not too kind to those who leave their kin in difficulties. He knew what dire fate would overtake his near and dear ones, should he leave them in utter want. He was wise in not completely liquidating his resources.

If Venkataramani were to be remembered by later generations the main facts of his life could be told briefly thus: Here was one who was imbued with the best traditions of a true Hindu, and in himself embodied a type of spiritual approach to all our modern problems through prescriptions that partook of the wisdom of the sages of our Upanishads and Epics.

Long, long will it take for us to realise that Venkataramani can have no true literary successor here, He stood strangely alone in the originality of his thought and style. His mixed metaphors occasionally came in for some criticism. But it could not be helped. Every picture and phrase of a poet cannot be grasped by those living in the present age. Some of his profundity may be grasped only by a future generation. For his writings are not only of today but of many tomorrows.