Shri. Vaman V. Chitaley, As I Knew Him
I had known the late Mr. Chitaley for more than 45 years. During this period I had come into close contact with him in connection with my work in the Editorial Department of the All India Reporter in all its branches.
I can say without hesitation that he was a most remarkable man and also, (to adopt the words of a title often appearing in the Reader's Digest) "a most unforgettable character".
I remember my first meeting with him in Madras. He had asked me to meet him at a certain place at 8 o'clock on one morning. Of course, I reached the place at the appointed time. But he had already arrived there, but was standing behind a tree. After I had reached the place and begun to look here and there, he came out of his hiding place and revealed himself to me. He said that he had wanted to test my punctuality. I thought this was rather a peculiar way of testing a man's punctuality. He could have tested my punctuality even without hiding himself behind a tree. During my long contact with him, I have noticed many other peculiarities of his nature, not very harmful in themselves, but which seemed to me not having much purpose in them.
From the moment of my first meeting with him, I got the impression that he was indeed a man out of the ordinary. The most important characteristic of his, which impressed itself indelibly on me, was his extraordinary energy which was seen in every aspect of his life. I remember his telling me that he had changed the proverb "Never postpone till tomorrow what you can do today" into "Never postpone till the next moment what you can do this moment". I think he followed this rule practically literally in his life.
Mr. Chitaley was not only very energetic but had a very sharp intellect and was capable of great concentration of mind. He told me that he made headnotes while travelling in trains. In those days he would travel third class for long distances as he was always on the move from one corner of the country to another, as the task of organising his infant business required his meeting people in different parts of the country.
Another characteristic of Mr. Chitaley was his will-power and resourcefulness, It must be remembered that he had to build up his concern almost from scratch and his difficulties, financial and otherwise, can be better imagined than described. It was only his grit and toughness of fibre, foresight, dogged perseverance, endless resourcefulness, astounding will-power, tenacity of purpose, thrift and other qualities that enabled him to overcome all his difficulties and build up such a vast concern.
One characteristic of his which must be specially emphasised is that he never lost heart or slackened his efforts, whatever the obstacles and difficulties in his way. He never yielded to pessimism. He was a true Karmayogi, who believed in doing what he thought was his duty without caring for praise or censure. He belonged to that rare type of people who say "What do they say? Let them say".
In the words of Longfellow, he had an extraordinary capacity to "labour and to wait".
One thing which impressed me very much from the beginning was that, unlike many others, Mr. Chitaley never put off paying his bills—whether it was printing bills or paper bills or even pay-bills of his employees. This ensured for him extraordinary credit all round besides enabling him to get what he wanted at a cheaper rate.
Mr. Chitaley's most striking feature was his absolute indifference to the conventions of society. He was most unconventional in his dress and manners. He also never attached any importance to appearances. To some extent he was like Mr. Churchill, who is reported to have said while he was sitting in his bath-tub in Tehran (where he had gone to attend one of those war-time conferences, which used to take place between the heads of the three super-powers from time to time) when President Roosevelt came and knocked at the door of the bathroom "come in, England has nothing to hide".
The late Mr. Chitaley had an extraordinary capacity to come down to the level of the most humble person when talking to him. He never assumed airs and never allowed it to be felt by others that he thought himself to be a rich man.
Mr. Chitaley, though extremely calculating in money matters, never stinted spending on objects which he thought would help his business. Though he was shrewd beyond all ordinary men, there were always clever people who could, at times, wangle out of him sizeable amounts of money, on some pretext or other, Mr. Chitaley did not seem to very much mind these matters.
Mr. Chitaley never believed in ostentatious living. Till a few years before his death he always travelled only in third class. He rarely rode in a car although he could have easily afforded a car. Even a couple of months before his death he could be seen riding in the crowded buses of Bombay and sometimes catching such buses while they were in motion. Mr. S. P. Kotwal, the Chief Justice of Maharashtra, when he came to the A. I.R., openly complimented him on his excellent health at an age when he had passed 84 and mentioned that he walked faster than Mr. Kotwal himself in the Hanging Garden of Bombay.
Mr. Chitaley was very regular in his personal habits, in matters like food and other things. His diet was very simple and frugal. He took meals only twice a day. He never took tea or coffee, or pan. He was a pure vegetarian, and never drank or smoked. He enjoyed classical Indian music and used to attend Marathi Dramas. But he never liked cinema shows.
Like Mahatma Gandhi, Mr. Chitaley sometimes committed Himalayan blunders, but only persons of Himalayan stature can commit Himalayan blunders and get over their effects without being too much bruised. Mr. Chitaley was such a person.
Mr. Chitaley was never afraid of admitting his errors, even to his subordinates. But he had his own way of valuing things with which one might not always agree.
Mr. Chitaley was a deeply religious man and a staunch believer in Hindu rites and ceremonies which were scrupulously performed under his orders in his house till the end of his life.
Mr. Chitaley had his own share of family and personal difficulties but he never allowed them to affect the equanimity of his mind or his work to which he attended unremittingly till his last days. Even when he came to know that he had cancer, he made light of the matter and never allowed it to affect his usual routine of work, reading, business discussions, enquiring minutely into the working of the different departments of the A. I. R. and so on. Truly, he had the stuff of a hero in him. He knew that his end was approaching. But he wanted to finish as much work as possible before death overtook him and ensure that the concern, especially the Editorial and Commentary departments in which he was particularly interested, would work on what he conceived to be the right lines, without any dangerous deviations.
Mr. Chitaley had a very keen and alert mind. He was an avid reader of books, newspapers, magazines, and periodicals of all sorts. He was fairly well informed in recent and contemporary world history. My feeling is that he had no special preference for books or periodicals in Marathi which was his mother-tongue nor could I see in him any allergy to English.
I had not much opportunity of knowing his political views, though I know that he was an ardent nationalist. I think he was not for the over-fragmentation of the country or for the attachment of too much importance to linguistic considerations in public administration. He was against anything that would weaken the country.
One of his pastimes was the study of novel and curious positions in law and recording them in note-books. He used to call them "Pocket pistols". One might call them "legal curios".
There was very little of a "doubting Thomas" in Mr. Chitaley. If anything, he was too cocksure of things. Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of England, is reported to have said about Lord Macaulay: "I wish I could be half as sure of one thing as Macaulay is of everything". I used to be reminded of the above words in my contacts with Mr. Chitaley.
Mr. Chitaley was a born debater and had always the best of the argument in his discussions with his assistants. But this does not mean that his assistants were always convinced as to the soundness of his proposals or policies. They too often found themselves in the unenviable predicament of being neither convinced nor able to convince. As one great man in contemporary India, is said to have told another great man, "Sir, you are able to confuse us but are not able to convince us", Mr. Chitaley's capacity of supporting the most untenable conclusions with the cleverest of arguments was astounding and it was impossible to dislodge him from his conclusions or make him change his decisions when once he had made up his mind. But he would always listen to you patiently and hear your arguments but, for what? Just to find fresh arguments with which to support what we, some of his workers thought to be wrong conclusions. But he never felt in the least offended if his proposals were opposed by any of us. There was full freedom of speech in his presence to the least among us.
Mr. Chitaley was very hospitable in his house. He was a true "Grihastha" in the Hindu sense of the term and kept open house where his relations and friends were always welcome. He used to feed a number of poor students in his house in the olden days, even at a time when he was just at the beginning of his career and could not be said to be rolling in wealth.
He was an ideal host and on occasions like marriages he used to feed a large number of guests lavishly. He never forgot his friends of his boyhood days or neglected his relations. His wealth and success never went to his head. But he was very sensitive to haughty behaviour by others and sometimes his sensitiveness led him to take decisions which have been turning points in his life.
He was a tireless experimenter—in every field—in dietetics, medicine, etc. He was an ardent believer in Homoeopathy and the Sanjivany system of treatment.
All in all, Mr. Chitaley was not only a remarkable man but a great man. If he built up a mighty law-publishing concern, it was not by a mere fluke of good luck, but by the extraordinary qualities of his head and heart, his dogged perseverance, courage, intelligence, resourcefulness and other qualities to which I have already referred. Today, his concern is easily one of the biggest law-publishing concerns in the Commonwealth. I remember that long ago, during the early days of my acquaintance with him, he told me that his ambition was not merely to amass wealth but to build up something that would live after him for the benefit of future generations. Who can say that his was a vain and empty dream? If he was a dreamer of dreams, he was also a hero of action, who knew how to achieve his dreams and transform them into realities. In fact, he was more a man of action than anything else. He was a born strategist and tireless campaigner. In another age he might have fought battles and established a kingdom or even an empire.
A. G. Gardiner in one of his essays once wrote "Wherever Meredith sits there is the throne of English literature". Mr. Chitaley had not any paraphernalia to show his position in the A. I. R. Office of which he was the supreme boss. He would be found sitting anywhere in the vast building and doing his work without anything in the furniture or the surroundings to show his supreme position in the concern. I would often quote to him the above sentence from A.G.G. and Say "wherever V.V.C. sits, there is the throne of the A. I. R.". Of course, he enjoyed the joke. I also used to cite to him the example of Lord Kitchener, who, like him (I have read somewhere), would not mind even using dealwood furniture. Mr. Chitaley used to like the comparison, because by nature he loved simplicity and appreciated it when this trait of his was admired by other people.
Such was the mighty Chitaley under whom I had the privilege of serving for more than 45 years. Mr. Chitaley was diminutive in size but was mighty in his resolution and will-power, and the iron determination with which he pursued his aims. He was a sort of 'pocket Hercules' as regards his capacity to fight and overcome all sorts of obstacles and difficulties, as it used to be said about the late L. C. M. Amery, Secretary of State for India, with reference to his physical toughness when compared to his size.
Such people are indeed rare. They are also public benefactors, as the institutions that they build up and leave behind them not only perpetuate their memory but benefit mankind.
Mr. Chitaley, no doubt, had his faults, but in the words of Mr. M. C, Setalvad, who said when writing about his senior, the late Mr. Bhulabhai Desai that Mr. Desai had his faults, "but who has not his faults?" Mr. Chitaley was unquestionably a great man of whom not only his family but also India may be proud.
"Lives of great men all remind us,Â
We can make our lives sublime,Â
And departing, leave behind us,Â
Foot-prints on the sands of time."
-Longfellow
Author Name: S. APPU RAO
