Musings of a 'pretender ' author

R.C. Rajamani

Acub reporter with PTI in Bombay in the early 1970's, I boasted to my childhood chum Varad that my special story on the condition of the inmates in a rehabilitation home of mentally retarded children was a front page winner in The Indian Express and The Free Press Journal. I told him I had to work hard for the story and spent over a week's time visiting the home and talking to the children.
"Juni," (my nickname), I am sure you would have felt completely at home," quipped my friend without batting an eyelid. The crack was without malice but with a lot of mischief.
That sums up Periathiruvadi Varadarajan aka Varad, the author of "Greyhairtalking" - a collection of essays born out of his keen observation of people, places and situations during the past five decades, four of them as a high ranking officer in the multinational banking sector that had taken him to a few places around the world. Hence his experiences have been global, giving him a world perspective of things and issues.
Varad has attempted the scarcely seen genre in literature today, at least in India, the Essay that indeed calls for the grey matter which he has in plenty both on the exterior and interior of his skull.
Written in a style remindful of P G Wodehouse, the essays were originally offered in his blog that enjoys a fair following. Light hearted mischief and mirth run through his essays written in good prose, revealing the writer's felicity with the language.
He may not be a Goldsmith but is certainly an inveterate wordsmith. A Gold Medalist in MA (English) from Madras University, Varad comes out as a conservative purist in his style, as his writing is shorn of the frills of a journalist fishing for the dramatic effect. Still he offers the element of surprise much like his inspirator, the inimitable Wodeshouse.
He has ensured leisurely readability for the wise, the retired and the pedant but perhaps failed to strike the fancy of the youth looking for race, pace and brevity. It would have been worth his effort if he had pruned and spruced up his blog writing for the book to cater to a wider audience.
I hope there will be further editions and the writer is tempted to pare down the pages even while including more from his blog that is still on with participative following.
The current edition presents 38 essays in 208 pages. A racy, condensed version is most likely to win much wider readership. That is also par for the course as the author says the proceeds of the sale of the book is going for a good cause, to Chayamitra, the trust which is involved in helping the poor in the areas of education.

Appropriately dedicating the book to arguably the greatest humour writer of the 20th century, Varad in a delightful take off on his Muse, writes: PG Wodehouse, perched comfortably in his heavenly abode, may not shudder violently if he comes to know this book is dedicated to him, but there may be an imperceptible twitch in him, befitting the minor standing of this pretender author."
The reader can savour many more such delights right through the book.



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