Loss of a crest jewel

Eminent Tamil short story writer Chudamani Raghavan's passing is a great loss to the Indian literary scene. C.S. Lakshmi, a close associate and Tamil scholar, reflects on their relationship which grew from a love for life and literature…

She was not unused to physical pain. She had endured a lot in her life and yet when I saw her emaciated body put on a ventilator, I felt she did not deserve this final indignity of clinical imprisonment in an intensive care unit. Sometimes our love for a person makes us do what is advised by doctors as best for them and there is no way this dilemma can be resolved. And I am sure she understood the love and affection that lay beneath these decisions.

She was that kind of a person. In this instance also she surrendered herself to whatever medical treatment was given to her with no complaints. When I bent down and called out her name on the day when she was semi-conscious, she opened those soulful eyes of hers and they slowly filled with tears. I knew the tears were for me; for the deep friendship we shared. It was her way of saying, “Good bye, take care and keep writing.” At least that is what I would like to think for whenever we met, even when she was ill or otherwise busy, she would always ask me what I was writing. She belonged to that era of writers who had great grace and warmth for fellow-writers. My friend, the well-known Tamil writer R. Chudamani, whom I have known for the last forty-five years, breathed her last in the early morning hours of September 13. Come January she would have been eighty.

Full report here Hindu