Prof H S Krishnaswamy

Sometimes it is difficult to explain some cruel ironies of life.

Late last evening an oldtimer, serious journalist called me out of the blue, to ask if I knew of the demise of HSK. This morning's papers had a terse set of 3 paras on Prof H S Krishnaswamy's death. He was an economist, writer, journalist, among other things. He was part of another generation. A person who couldn't suffer stupidity; a 'Nehruvian Indian' who knew less of his own interest, as of the larger interest of the world and his country.

Ironic because here was a man I had known, oft and on, for 26 years, and who never once wrote about me or the work we have been doing. And in his very last column in life -- he wrote every week his notes for Star of Mysore, and early on used to write for Sudha, a wellknown magazine -- he chose to write about BCIL and the work we have represented. He wrote better in Kannada than he did in English, as another friend observed this morning.

I had known HSK for a brief while in the early 80s when I was a journalist filing stories on business, economy trends and so on for papers/magazines I worked for. Our first meeting was one where he stopped at a point and said, "You said you were an accountant, is that right?" I nodded. "You must be doing economics, young man! Why are you wasting time as a scribe?" A year later, some chance events had me moving to doing my further studies in the area of economics. He had sown the seed of that idea in my mind. Those early years of my career, I have played down, because they were a 'waste of time' as far as I was concerned. They never came in handy for those directions I chose to take in the next 25 years.

HSK didn't think so. I met him a couple of years ago at a wedding of a mutual friend's daughter. We could barely say hello to each other and only exchanged some pleasantries amid the noise and bustle. I was meeting him after nearly 15 years after, and I could see he still did not approve of my moving away from academics! Another senior journalist of the 80s was with us, and HS remarked to him that he thought I had wasted my years 'doing business'.
It is a strange feeling, personally, to read this feature of HSK, his life's last column written 2-3 days before his death. You can see from the feature that follows this mail, that he has quoted me at some fair length, although he didn't meet me or call! He must have gleaned what he has written about BCIL from what he had read in the news and web about our work. The last meeting was 2 years ago!
He must have had a premonition of death. He was probably making amends to me by finally conceding that there is some good coming out of all my 'wasted years'!

HSK used to teach economics at a well known College in Mysore. He counted as friends legends like Dr. C D Narasimhaiah, who was a giant among English teachers of the world, without any doubt. Many of our current writers like A K Ramanujam were CDN's students. HSK himself has had many admirers, many professionals whom he mentored quietly, in his self-effacing in his years.

In June 1983, when I covered the series of meetings at the National Economic Forum that Chief Minister Hegde called in Bangalore, with VKRV Rao and other eminent economists participating in the colloquium, HSK came up to me on the third day and said, "You seem to be an indignant young man!" I did not realize what he was saying until I went back to see what Business Standard had published that morning of my report with a byline. I had said something mildly disparaging about Ashok Mitra and his ambivalence on market capitalism. It is another matter that directions that people like Ashok Mitra gave to West Bengal eventually made Bengal the strident pro-capital state that it became later under Jyoti Basu.

Twenty five years later, I am still indignant about many things! It is not easy for for some of us to accept all those things around us that are not right.

With HSK's passing away, a part of me died yesterday. He was among the last bastions of value that was left in a time when a whole new generation of people who have not seen suffering, simply don't understand what it takes to uphold such principles as this wonderful man did.

Here is that last column of his. Wonder what he would have said to me, if I had had the chance to meet him...