At A Dinner: Thought Provoking Humour Soul Searching Satire in Lucid Indian Style

Pure humour, humour without malice, is hard to find in a world as serious as ours, and the passing of a humorist is a personal loss to those who have laughed with him when he was alive and giving of his best. This paper can take special pride in the fact that Mr. S.V. Vijayaraghavachari first delighted the public in its columns and that it was as a journalist that he won acclaim throughout South India. S.V.V. was popular for much the same reason as Charlie Chaplin, that is, he took the small man, the house-holder with a load of troubles on his back, and showed him as the victim of the minor worries of life. This figure, which the average reader could recognise as himself, was highly resilient, capable of laughing at his mishaps and enjoying them in recollection. The social analyst would find that S.V.V. was a conservative in outlook, laughing most heartily at the paraphernalia of modern life, the motor car, shoes and sandals, the fashionably dressed woman, the college man and it must be added, the very news papers in which his articles appeared. "Travelling in a tram or train" (he once wrote) "news papers come in handy to spread on the bench to sit on so as not to soil the trousers. If an ink bottle is over turned in the table you crumple up a news paper and rub hard till the stain is removed." He went on to remark that newspapers were the favourite diet of donkeys but he concluded that newspapers were indispensable, for "without a newspaper how should we know who died when?" Alas, today the papers mourn the death of this live- list of writers. But, S.V.V. has assured himself of immortality through his many books and novels, some in English which is simple and expressive and some in excellent Tamil. He has had many imitators but nobody has equaled his gaiety. The best way to keep his memory green would be to publish a uniform edition of his writings, some of which give a better picture of our changing society than the heavier works of economists and statisticians.