"S.V.V." is sixty today. Rather, it is Mr. S.V. Vijayaraghavachariar, his alter ego, who has passed that important milestone, for "S.V.V." is timeless. Like Elia, Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll he has, with his pen-name, conjured out of the vasty deep a personality larger than life and living in a world of its own creation. That world contacts everyday reality at many points but is not imprisoned in it; it envelopes it, on the other hand, in a bright and hilarious haze which reveals beauty in drabness and joy in the heart of tedium. Mr. Vijayaraghavachariar is a genial, cultured and modest man who rejoices in many friends, but "S.V.V.'s" friends are numberless. The big and enthusiastic audience that assembled to do him honour yester day testified to him honour yesterday testified to his popularity with all classes of the reading public. That Indians were a humourless people is a long exploded myth; but there was some truth in the accusation that we were not overready to cherish our humorists, our artists and all those who make life happier or pleasanter for us. Yesterday's func tion and others of its kind in the recent past, such as the one at which a similar honour was done to Mr. T. Sundarachariar, the gifted interpreter of our Sanskrit classics, show, however, that there is a welcome change in this respect. Contemporary India, with its infinite variety and startling contrasts, has produced in the past few years a luxuriant outcrop of humorous writers: and among them "S.V.V.'s" individual note, rich and racy of the soil, is unmistakable and inimitable. On this auspicious occasion THE HINDU, which remembers with legitimate satisfaction that "S.V.V." made his first appearance in its columns, adds its felicitations and good wishes to those of his numerous admirers.
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