V Si. had great respect for life. He wanted to find grace in life and in literature. He picked out graceful and sweet elements from works of art and it was this quality that shaped his life too. In V Si.’s view, a work that lacked direct connection with life was not a literary work at all.
T R Venkatarama Shastri can be called a disciple of Shivaswami Iyer. Sir S Varadachari, who retired after serving as a Federal Court judge and Venkatarama Shastri both practiced law in Shivaswami Iyer’s office and were assistants to him.
It is worth sharing how Venkatarama Shastri was appointed as an intern under Shivaswami Iyer.
Problems escalated when the leaders of the workers were fired on flimsy reasons. The cases went to the high court, the leaders requested Shastri to be a witness in the case. The administration didn’t budge and appointed the then famous criminal lawyer from Madras, Mr. Norton. Mr. Norton had a stellar record when it came to winning cases he argued and used to charge an exorbitant fee of ₹10000 per day. The case came under the bench headed by Singaravelu Mudaliar. Shastri was the main eyewitness who was to be cross examined.
One can hardly forget V Si.’s extraordinary oratory skills. It was a celebration just to listen to him speak – he was fluent in giving lectures both in English and Kannada. Both the subject matter of his talk and the beauty of his presentation enraptured the audience. Lucid speech, broadminded thoughts, deep and wide study – all these came together to make him an eloquent orator. Even when he was given a topic only a few minutes before he went on to the dais, he would lecture as though he was prepared to speak on the topic from a long time.
Keeping the glory and successes achieved by the Mahārāja of Bikaner as a pretext, I wrote and published around ten or fifteen open letters concerning the politics of the indigenous provinces addressing them to him. (‘Problems of Indian Native States: Open Letters to His Highness The Maharaja of Bikaner’ – By A Mysorean.)
A compilation of these open letters published as a small book had been reviewed in the newspapers.
It had been announced that V S Srinivasa Sastri—member of the Servants of India Society—who had come to Bangalore, would be delivering a lecture on the subject of ‘Education’ the very next evening (of the previous incident) or perhaps it was three days later. A thousand people came, in batches, to listen to that lecture – I was a witness to it.