Scholar, SUI Generis

The mercurial devourer of knowledge—and giver of care and affection—in youth has crafted his own, unique path. Ram Guha is a category- efying scholar who takes on bhakts and mullahs.

- Arvind Subramanian

TO know someone for 42 years, and for the liking and valuing to grow, Bordeaux-like, with age says a lot about that person. That is how I feel about Ramachandra Guha, who entered my life at St. Stephen’s College way back in 1976 as a mentor and guide, roles he unilaterally chose for himself as my self-anointed ‘Anna’ or big brother, and has stayed on to become a close friend.

Then as now, Ram was opinionated, and mercurial. Then, more than now, there was the lurking vulnerability rela­ ted in part to his chronic asthma. Then, hopefully with no traces now, he was prone to melodrama. I think in one such fit, he gave away his entire collection of great cricket books, only to rebuild that part of his library later in life when sense and sobriety returned.

My abiding early memory is of Ram standing below my room at St. Stephen’s, morning newspaper and asthma inhaler in hand, hair ruffled and splayed (even as it is today), muezzin­ing me for breakfast with repeated calls of ‘Super­Dey’. With playful mercilessness he mocked me out of my delusions of cricketing ability, punctured my pre­ tensions to being well­read and knowl­ edgeable, and continually exposed my sartorial tastes, contrasting the flare of my cheap, bell­bottom trousers with the chic drain­pipes and jeans of the just­ turned­co­ed St. Stephen’s.

Any transition from the relative back­ waters of my unknown, modest school in Chennai to St. Stephen’s would have guaranteed that levelling; Ram simply hit the fast­forward button on that process, and looking back, rightly so.