HIS FRIEND SHANKARA NARAYANAN

During his college days in B Sc (Honours) in 1948, he had a close friend by name Shankara Narayanan who was in Clive's Hostel while Padda was a day scholar from Vanniyadi Street in Malaikkottai, Trichy. If we belonged to lower middle class family, he was perhaps lower than that. One day when Padda visited him in his hostel room, he found a pile of banana peels dumped in a corner of the room. Soon it was found out that the boy had not paid his hostel fees and hence was not permitted to dine there. So he was on a diet of bananas with peels thrown around. Without a hesitation he was brought to our home where we shared a meal with him and he stayed with us for a week or so till his maternal uncle could come to visit him in Clive's hostel and found out that he was living out with us. When he came to us and asked Shankara Narayanan why he has not locked the hostel room, pat came the reply from the boy "what was there to loose?" ஆமாம் அங்கே என்ன இருக்கு?- a poignant way he reminded his uncle of the delay in his remittance to him and the non-payment of hostel dues, which we all used to repeat later in life talking about protecting frivolous things. This chance meeting between Sudhama and Krishna bonded them till their exam. and even beyond later in life.