In memoriam
Ravi Dayal 1938-2006
THE Sunday morning that Ravi Dayal died I arrived at the crematorium to find Ravis ex-colleague and my ex-boss, Santosh Kumar Mukerji standing there with tears in his eyes. Like many of us who had the good fortune to work with Ravi, SKM, as he is affectionately known, could not believe that Ravi (or RD as we called him) was gone. As we stood silent and disbelieving, we saw many of our old colleagues draw up one by one, among others Adil Tyabji, Hemlata Shankar, Bhola Verma, Prabir Bhambal and C.B. Sharma. Not all of us had been with the Oxford University Press (OUP), but in publishing everyone knew Ravi. He was the stuff of legend. I think SKM put into words what all of us were thinking: There will not be another like him.
My association with Ravi goes back to the early seventies, when I came to work at the Oxford University Press, all of 21, naïve, and wide-eyed. Ravi was then Chief Editor and inhabited a cabin a little to the left of the one occupied by the production department. Ravis space was known by the smell of bidis, which he and Adil Tyabji had begun to smoke at the same time. Every afternoon after lunch Ravi and Adil would walk out to the paanwala down the road to purchase bidis and sometimes also a paan. We (then) young things were a little in awe of him, but also found him intriguing and different (imagine a boss in a khadi kurta), and speculated madly about why he was single and who he was in love with and so on. Ravi, of course, friendly and charming but intensely private, never gave away a thing.
It was when I made the switch from production to editorial that I got a chance to work closely with Ravi. He handed me a book to edit, a wonderful account of the dargah of Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer, and held my hand through the process of learning all about diacriticals and semicolons, references and fullstops and commas. He was the finest of teachers, generous and encouraging, but strict and critical. If you did something wrong there was no recrimination, but a quiet, I say, this isnt quite right, you know
Watching Ravi work, and working with him, was the first lesson in understanding what was so important about being an editor. We watched in admiration as one book turned into two, and then into three and four, as Ravi painstakingly built up OUPs excellent list of academic books, and drew some of the best scholars into its fold. We learnt that a good editor needed to be dynamic, critical, empathetic and hard working and calm. Underneath all this lay a passion for what he did. It wasnt an easy mix, although Ravi seemed to do it effortlessly. In the years that I worked with him, I never saw him lose his temper or shout at anyone and the only inkling that he was annoyed about something was a slight inclination of the head, a slight change in tone. Once I wrote a long note to my bosses, complaining that I had too much to handle on one project and that it could not be done, and remember ending on a not very nice note. Ravi talked to me about it: That was a good note you wrote, he said, many good points but a bit bolshy towards the end dont you think? That was all; it has stayed with me for over twenty five years.
One day Ravi announced to the office that he was getting married. It was to be a quiet wedding, no huge celebration, no huge reception. His future wife was called Mala. We bought them a huge bunch of flowers and then, in a moment of naughtiness, I suggested that we send them a congratulatory telegram, using one of the numbered messages then available for a fixed fee. In this instance we chose once again naughtily the message reserved for people who had a new child, Congratulations on the new arrival. RD was vastly amused and ribbed us all about it endlessly. Even when he and I became friends instead of just colleagues, he never let me forget it!
Later, we had the opportunity to work more closely together on a project that Ravi was leading the production of the Oxford School Atlas in Hindi and Punjabi for the Punjab State Education Board. This necessitated several trips to Chandigarh, and almost every week, he and I would travel together in a battered old maroon Standard Herald that was Ravis car as Chief Editor, and later as General Manager, until it was replaced by something bigger and better. But those were not the days of air-conditioned cars; nor was there anything other than Fiats and Ambassadors and Standard Heralds on the road. Ravi loved his Herald, and we came to identify him with it. It was on one of these trips to Chandigarh that I informed Ravi that I was fed up with the OUP practice of addressing the bosses as Mr. this and Mr. that, and that I was going to call him Ravi. He was enough of an old world man to not be hugely enthusiastic about this, but he did not say no, and soon he became just Ravi instead of RD or Mr. Dayal.
The transition from Mr. Dayal to Ravi also marked the transition from boss to friend. Like many others who are now publishers in their own right in one way or another, I left the OUP to set up on my own. Two years after Kali was born, Ravi left to set up his imprint, Ravi Dayal Publisher. I never tired of telling him that I had got there before him, and he always laughed good naturedly about it. And until he began to feel unwell, Ravi was happy with his modest venture. He published the books he liked, those he wanted to publish; he did not need to take anyone elses advice on them. He read every book he published, and all his authors felt cared for, and somehow always held a place for him in their hearts. It wasnt only the personal element. Ravis publishing venture held its own as a quality imprint that authors felt privileged to belong to. If one had a book published by Ravi Dayal, one could be sure it would be meticulously edited to the last detail, with Ravis fine pen and in his elegant, cursive script. One would receive handwritten letters, handwritten royalty statements, and if one wasnt an author but possibly a buyer, excited phone calls about this or that book and gentle suggestions that one might like to buy it.
Publisher par excellence, Ravi always kept himself somewhat outside the politics of the publishing world. This made everyone want to have him on their committees, but he would always gracefully decline. His non-participation was a reminder to everyone that the values he held dear were what they would also like to aspire to. He was happy and content in his chosen world his publishing house, wife Mala and daughter Naina, Ravis two precious women. For many of us in publishing, however, he was our teacher, mentor, friend. Shortly after his death, I heard from publisher friends all over the world; each one of us felt in some way bereft and rudderless. It wasnt that people sought him out for advice though when they did he was always responsive. It was just that by being there, doing what he did, doggedly and alone (till he died he remained a more or less one man office, editing his own manuscripts, proofing them painstakingly, taking them to the printer, and so on). Now it is as if someone who was a symbol of the politics of the possible has gone. Where would we now look for inspiration?
A month or so before he died, I met Ravi at a party a birthday party for his wife Malas aunt. We chatted in one corner, he and Mala and Naina and I. He informed me then, proudly, that he had given up smoking, that this was his birthday present to his wife Mala on her 60th birthday the end of the beedi era. He looked happy to have taken this step. Mala and Naina hovered over him, anxious about his health which had not been too good, worried about what he was eating and drinking. Ravi made light as he always did of their concern. A few weeks later I heard that he had been diagnosed with cancer, and that he and Mala had received the news with the stoic fortitude and slight jokiness with which they dealt with many things. Ten days or so after this he was gone.
The face of publishing in India has been changing slowly. With Ravis going, the pace of change will be accelerated, for he symbolized, more than anyone does in publishing today, the old adage that publishing is (was) really a gentlemans profession. In more ways than one, Ravi was a gentleman publisher and editor. He held his personal and professional world close, but for many of us who learnt from him, and had the opportunity to work with him, he remains friend, boss, mentor and inspiration.
Urvashi Butalia
