The intriguing initials which delighted a generation of sober and serious readers of "The Hindu' from about the mid 1920's to 1930's. The initials belonged to Shri S.V. Vijayaraghavachariar, an advocate from Thiruvanna malai. His prolific writing in "The Hindu" and "Ananda Vikatan" on the everyday events of life with a humorous perspective have delighted gene ration of readers. Of S.V.V., the English essayist who made his bow regularly in 'The Hindu' an English civilian of the time Hilton Brown said in the course of an address before the East India Association.
"There is a man in Madras called S.V. Vijayaraghava chariar who is writing the most delicious stuff light as a feather, satirically humorous, not untender, most intimately revealing the Hindu life; splendid, spiteful stuff which can bear direct comparison of mutatis mutandis with the work of our own E.M. Delafield."
These collections are to be read, reread, treasured and read again and again. You can be sure to be delighted every time you read them.
I wonder why my friend S.V.V. has asked me to write a Foreword to his latest, 'The Holiday Trip. Probably with the compassion and geniality of a kindly humorist he wants to give me, a fellow craftsman rather struggling in heavy sand, a joy-ride to publicity and fame on his own broad and splendid shoulders. I am grateful to him for the chance. I always esteem it a privilege to associate myself with him and it is indeed an honour and an enrichment to write a Foreword to a book from the pen of S.V.V. S.V.V. is always a delight to read. He keeps you perpetually alive with his kindling humour, at once homely and genial. I have always enjoyed him with selfless surrender, not being a literary critic by temperament or choice and thus a born alien to the sumptuous but acid joy of dissection. Do we not relish a dainty dish especially as a guest, without knowledge of its vitamin values, graded like a rainbow from A to E, though not so beautiful or rich as Nature's own lovely are in the sky, that preludes the descending rains? S.V.V. has always been to me a dainty, familiar dish; not made up of alien or imported stuff-finned food with a mangled look of quotational reminiscence - but of very homely materials, hand-pounded, handmade even when his urban-minded Jaya may not stoop to do kitchen work on the eve of a holiday trip. S.V.V.'s art is realistic, and his genius homely and in the main, descriptive and interpretative. His humour is fundamental, not verbal. It takes its nourishment from the sap of life. It arises from a real situation and not from a skilled manipulation of a word or phrase presented to the reader from a peculiar or whimsical angle. It flows from a correct and healthy conception of character in the tangled relationships of life. Even sorrow, so ancient an inheritance of man, yields a teardrop of sweetness to the touch of his smiling and gracious pen. He has poured into his writings, for all the travail and abundance of incessant weekly labour, something of his own sweetness, candour and freshness which I have enjoyed so often in my personal contacts with him.
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