A Genius Wasted

(ಸಹಪಾಠಿ ಮಿತ್ರರು ಕಂಡ ಬಾಗಲೋಡಿ ೪)

(ಬಾಗಲೋಡಿ ದೇವರಾಯರ ಸ್ಮರಣ ಸಂಪುಟ - ‘ದೇವಸ್ಮರಣೆ’ ೨೦೦೩ರಲ್ಲಿ ಅತ್ರಿ ಬುಕ್ ಸೆಂಟರ್ ಪ್ರಕಟಿಸಿದ ಪುಸ್ತಕದ ಯಥಾ ವಿದ್ಯುನ್ಮಾನ ಪ್ರತಿ ೨೦೧೭. ಸಂಪಾದಕ - ಜಿ.ಟಿ. ನಾರಾಯಣ ರಾವ್)

 (ಭಾಗ ೯)

- K. Raghavendra Rao

The title of this brief journey into the past, into the fabulous mid - 1940s, may sound some what negative but it is really not meant to be so. When I refer to a wasted genius, what I mean is the gap between potentiality and actuality, possibility and reality. Deva Rao was a genius, and I am using that term without reservation, and the full flowering of that genius did not take place for reasons over which Deva Rao himself had very little control. I shall return to this point later and right now let me begin at the begining, my first encounter of him.

When I joined the BA (Honours) course in English language and literature at Madras Christian College, Tambaram, in 1945, Deva Rao was already there in the second year of that three-year course. Even before I physically faced him, I had already heard about him as a legend. His contemporaries at the college referred to him with awe as a brilliant thinker and a master of English language, both spoken and written.