VIGNETTES FROM MY PAST -1
One More Unsung Hero :
MY CHUM ANAND
MURTY
By Prof Madhusudan Thakur
A year or so ago, while I was trying to tackle what I have all along
considered a well-nigh
unlikely task---writing to make an objective assessment of an intimate
friend who was no more with us, calling him an unsung hero of sorts---I
continually remembered my dear cherished contemporary, friend, secret sharer
and alter-ego, one in a class by himself, not only for me but also to those few
who happened to know both Anand Murty and Madhusudan closely.
Yes,he was for my mind yet another unsung one, but not at all like the one
I was writing about then at his daughter's behest. I recalled Anand Murty once
again while I was making another fatuous bid to translate some poems by my late
friend, the Hindi poet Ganga Prasad Vimal, which were published later at his
insistence as The Unwritten and the Unseen in 2010.
At my age I really don't know what to say of the way memory operates, but
as yet another secret sharer of mine decades younger to me says: "Memory
plays tricks, it fades and flashes; narratives lose themselves and lie in wait
to be found...." True to his name, Anand Murty would often lie in wait to
be found. Even when we happened to meet on occasions he had little to say to me,
he would always bring me joy, unfailingly so: he seemed to sense without words
between us, what I was going through in my life at that point existentially,
but it wasn't simply that : he knew how I was dealing with it and revelled in
it.
The course of our lives were set far apart by circumstances for long
periods of time, and yet when our paths crossed, it was always as though we had
never ever been parted. He was ever there for me where we had been together the
last time, sometimes years and years ago. Perhaps I was there for him too, who
knows.
It was almost as if we were soul-mates in a strange surreal ineffable
sense, at once simple and profound like words at the summits of poetry,
like notes in a Sonata of Bach or Beethoven that we could share and rejoice in.
Indeed , it seems to me the two of us had reached out to each other to arrive
where no separation ever mattered and even time had turned timeless. It is just
one of those things that happen to people as though by a blessing, a gift from
beyond.
Of course, we were both brought together by our love of letters, by our
vocation as teachers, but our relationship was something apart, being induced
by forces beyond us, forces we could hardly define or even point to. Anand
Murty knew my dedication to Nirala-ji's work, especially work from his last
phase covering Geet-Kunj, Archana and Aradhana, and being his father's son, he
knew what it meant to me at a depth that no one else could possibly have
plumbed and he knew that I knew this without words between us. It remained a
mystery to each of us what brought us so close to each other and yet we knew
our bond for a fact. Indeed, it was so transparent that some few among our
common acquaintances sensed it and wondered no end at the phenomenon.
I distinctly remember one occasion nearly seven decades ago when Anand
Murty tried to speak of it among a small close group, no more than half a dozen
of us, but gave it up a couple minutes later: the spring of the truly
unspeakable had been touched in him, to the amazement of all present except
Madhusudan.
It would be a vanity of vanities in me if I on my part so many years later
tried to articulate what we had for each other in which we rejoiced whenever we
happened or found occasions to meet. Suffice it then to say that Anand Murty
represented for me something utterly indefinable and yet so palpable that it
continues to be present to me even after all these years. Even to try and attempt
to answer the question what it is that his presence means to me would be very
much like John Donne - four centuries ago - asking us to tell him where the
past years are.
[
New Delhi, 25 December, 2021]
TO THIS LET ME ADD…
BSM Murty
Few people today would be able to fathom the depth of feeling in such
writing. Indeed, it is something indescribable, something beyond words. This is
a forgotten, little known story of two lovers of literature – especially,
English and western literatures, who were ‘soul-mates in the truest sense. It
was all seen by me, understood by me to a lesser extent.
Prof Madhusudan Thakur was my teacher, who gave us about a dozen lectures
on George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ in our final MA class. His lectures were so profound
that only a few of us would listen to them – as if swimming with them. I can
say today that they gave me a fresh critical understanding of the art of
fiction. Leavis expounds on that novel in his ‘Great Tradition’ – a landmark
book in fiction criticism.
Prof. Thakur was one of the most humble and submissive teachers that taught
us, hardly ever looking up from the text before him on the lectern. Only a very
few of us were his admirers, because of the depth of his lectures. Though he
taught us only for a few months, but I must admit that he left a deep critical
imprint on my literary sensibility. He was also a very intimate friend of my
elder brother, Shri Anand Murty (about whom he writes so feelingly in his
memoir given above.)
Dr Thakur never married, and now lives the life of a recluse, a philosopher
saint. He has published many books of translation – of Nirala’s poems,
Tulsidas’s ‘Vinay Patrika’, poems of Ganga Prasad Vimal, another of his close
friends. Two of his books – ‘Selected Poems of
Nirala’ and ‘Epochal Voices’ are published by Sahitya Academy, including
some books in Maithili.
He is overly affectionate towards me, not only as his favourite student,
but his buddy’s younger brother. I have remained in touch with him eversince.
He belongs to a famous family in Mithila. His father, late Pushkar Thakur, was
Welfare Secretary to Bihar Government, one of the most illustrious bureaucrats
in Bihar. Other distinguished names are – Dr Damodar Thakur, Professor of
English, Janardan Thakur and his son,Sankarshan Thakur (Dr MMT’s nephew, the
latter two – eminent journalists and writers in their own right.
Once, in Delhi he came all the way
from Palam Vihar to meet me at my nephew’s place in Vasant Kunj. And since then,
of and on, we have been in touch through long telephonic conversations.
Dr MM Thakur is still in relatively good health at 90, and talking to him
nowadays on phone, I feel like a young man of 25!
May Prof.Thakur live to complete a century!
More reminiscences of my university days will follow in this series
All photos taken by me in the late 1950s.
Text & Photos © Dr BSM Murty
