tonse krishna bhat

=dhanya vadagalhu=
thank you

By Kulamarva Balakriishna

Vienna,Sunday,February 17,2008: My wife is back from Padubidri.
I am thankful to friend Tonse Krishna Bhat and Prof.K.P.Rao,who
took some interest to visit her.Krishna Bhat, she said had given her
some presents. I say =dhanyavadagalhu= to him.He is a collector
of ethnic sources of information of sociological significance helping
researchers from abroad even translating the information
gathered by him and interpreting them.Besides Krishna Bhat
has interest in herbals.Whenever, I was in Padubidri he gave me
company and traveled with me to different places.

I come in touch with him because, Krishna Bhat sent me a letter
with a manuscript written by his niece, my late friend Ram Kalkur´s
daughter´s manuscript of a book on Beetles. I read the script and
returned it.I felt to write a book on even popular musical bands
one requires some special expertise on the subject apart from
information about the group and members. Since then we
became friends.

As for Ram Kalkur, he was a great unassuming friend. I think as the
head of UNI he must have given employment some four or six
individuals I had sent him.Of them was from U.P. His name
A.Rudra, about whom I feel sorry and have a guilt feeling having
sent him to Ram Kalkur without full knowledge of the bhayya´s
personal character. That man had to be dismissed from UNI.
All others made good in UNI and some went upto the top levels.
I do not want to name them.They all came from our region,
Kerala.One was a Gujarati, he was also very nice gentleman,who
worked for the UNI from Kathmandu.I stayed with him in 1971
when I went there to gather information on trading rural Nepali
girls into Indian brothels in Calcutta and Bombay.Where had
the first taste of buffalo meat at a dinner served by Orissan
Ram Patrao.Here I had met a Marathi pimp,who had told me
agriculture and prostitution had accompanied humans from
the beginnings of civilization.

I wrote about it for The Times Weekly to be in the bad books
of Bombay Police. I had written there how Haji Malang Hill was
used by the pimps to train innocent girls into prostitutes.I had
published a photo the teenager prostitute girl employed in
Bombay cages on the Foras Road carrying scars of slave trader
branding of hot iron on her breast.That is the source of information
along with my book A Portrait of Bombay´s Underworld
and inspiration for the film makinfg of Salaam Bombay, which
was not acknowledged by the film maker true to Indian Samskriti
culture,let alone taking advance pemission for the use. This
teenager was indeed identifiable =solah saal= character of the
film.I did not take the film maker to a court of law since when
I saw the film it was time barred, so I was given to understand.I wish
all the best to the celebrity film maker. If necessary I would accept
she did not read The Times of India daily.Although my book was well
read, it is possible it can be missed. But The Times of India´s
The Times Weekly was for a long time distributed free with the
daily.So there is no way the Bollywooders not having found
information there.

On account of my that article, the Bombay Police put me on their
black list.They also tagged me the authorship of a black painting
article on the police appearing in The Times Weekly without
the author´s identity revealed by my friend Zuhair Kashmeri,
who now lives in Canada!

Coming back to Ram Kalkur,he has been talking about translating
the late Shivarama Karanth´s novel Chomana Dudi. I think it appeared
in The Illustrated Weekly of India and later in the book for as well.
I heard this developed some bad blood between Kalkur and Karanth.
I am sure Kalkur was a person of integrity.The late Shivarama
Karanth had a good name.But he was not of a sterling character.
I realised this within the first four five years of our friendship in
the 1950s.My impression was later justified by his soiled relationship
with my late friend,Kannada author K.S.Haridas Bhat, I learn.(end)