Famous Person and Personalities

About the Book A dynamic nation is made by its people, led by eminent personalities. Thanks to their exemplary contribution the nation grows richer and stronger. They belong to all walks of life-political, academic, fine and performing arts, culture, science, industry and commerce. Their struggles and victories, pains and pleasures and the confident march to success are part of the national history.

Lives of such great men and women continue to inspire the generations that follow. The eminent sons and daughters of Mother India brought glory to themselves and to their motherland.

This publication contains the life stories and achievements of some eminent personalities. Written in lucid language form the common reader, each life story is a capsuled inspiration for today's youth, and an excellent biographical reference work for everyday.

Foreword MR. K. CHANDRASEKITARAN has asked me to write a brief Foreword to his short sketches of some well-known figures of Madras and I do so with pleasure. I have no pretensions to be a critic of an academic type since my knowledge of the rules and science of criticism is very limited. I like what I like and dislike what I dislike and I do not always know why. These sketches attract me for several reasons. They are written in simple and elegant prose and with a justness of appreciation and real understanding. It is not easy to give portraits of living people. If we like them, we tend to flatter them beyond measure; if we dislike them, we are tempted to flay them alive. It is easy to be freely adulatory or devastatingly cruel. It is hard to be sympathetic as well as just. In this difficult task, the writer. I believe, has succeeded.

Oh account of the young writer's limited knowledge and experience, his subjects are mostly taken from the group of Mylapere lawyers of the liberal school of Indian Politics. Their strength as well as their weakness is an exaggerated sense of balance and proportion, hardly consistent with great faith in or even enthusiasm for radical changes. It is a law of life that our desires can be accomplished only by fighting and making sacrifices for them. It is good for our politicians to know how others see them. If these sketches induce a mood of self-inquiry, they are not written in vain.

Mr. K. Ram Mohan Sastri's drawings add considerably to the value of an interesting book.

Preface To write about living persons, has often a distinct disadvantage. Criticism, however gentle, wounds fine susceptibilities. But every one of us is a critic. Only the sketch-writer expresses him- self in print. So, when we are displeased, as we all are, we should be good enough to concede that the writer's desire to praise and criticise is as much his privilege as our own, the difference only being that he exposes himself to the public gaze, while we are safe in comparative seclusion.

It is with this comforting philosophy, I come out with my book of sketches of some important men and a few domestic characters, who have inevitably invited my pen. Among those I have chosen for portraiture, some are known to me too intimately to bear analysis. But still I feel a strange justification in my attempt.

Some of these sketches have already appeared in the Triveni, the Scholar and the Madras Law College Magazine. More or less they retain the same form here. Of the domestic characters, my teacher is no more, though the sketch was written when he was with me.

**Contents and Sample Pages**