LAST week, I was reviewing my special collection of Books stored at home. Suddenly, I find a book on London called ‘The London Anthology’ by Hugh & Pauline Massihgham, owned by erstwhile sports reviewer, NS Ramaswami, his contributions to sports. This was the book I had handed over to Mr Ramaswami during my visit to Madras during 1900s; as per my father’s instructions.
Some memories come sliding me connected with NS Ramaswami. My visits to Madras in 1950s were mainly to assist my father in his book business. He would either ask me to handover some book or purchase some others from dealers at Moore Market or from Ramaswami.
My first visit to his house in Besant Nagar accompanied with a humourous affront; not knowing the exact address, I enquired about it with a owner of a petty shop nearby. After certain preliminary enquiry about this person, almost shouted saying, “Oh! Is that person a paithyakaran (madman) who walks to his office in the middle of the road holding a book and reading it all along! From a cursery glance at some of his sports reviews which appeared in Swatantra of C Rajagopalachari dated Oct 29, 1955 and Dec 3, 1955 on CK Naidu; in the Muses, one would see his review of the sport will invariably end up as a literary essay; replete with reference to EV Lucas or Thomas Hood.
One of his contribution OCTOBER is a veritable literary essay. One of the paragraph reads like this — ‘October coincides with the autumn in the text books, but the truth is that its characteristics are far different in our country. No South Indian can as Thomas Hood did see old Autumn in the misty morn, stand shadowless like silence, listening to Silence.” Under the caption ‘The Muses’ NS Ramaswami writes, The book with the pleasant title ‘Cricket all his life’, enshrining in itself the aspiration of many a weary wage earner as he spends in office a day of divine weather such as was experienced recently in the city, was a strange object to have been found as the grim and frowning shelves of the Universal library. As with chastened spirit and shrinking body, I stared forlornly at a portentous volume as the inverse ratio, which lay in conscious superiority next to a dreadful tome as atomic reactor; there suddenly steamed upon my sight a gratifying vision of an individual informally dressed who lay on the ground in negligent ease as he discussed an appeal.
This pleasant figure, well reproduced in many colours, was an introduction to the book of the late EV Lucas.
The connection between literature and cricket has been intimate and of long standing and the result has always been amiable.