Ramani, RIP
Today, at 8.30 am, Rajan Ramani, my friend of nearly five decades, passed away. He was 62, a man at the height of his career as a legal expert at India Cements. Diagnosed with cancer three and a half years ago, he tried to lead a normal life till almost the very end, staying in touch with his many, many friends, enjoying evenings at the club, though less and less able to get a round of his beloved golf.
It was Ramani’s move from tennis to golf about a decade ago that reduced the frequency of my contact with him. He had made me a member of Besant Nagar Club in the 1980s and bulldozed me into overcoming my inhibitions enough to become a decent club level player despite my late start, well into my thirties. His love of golf soon turned into an obsession and eventually left him with no time or inclination for tennis. His golf circle grew and grew until in time a whole gang of players began to call themselves Ramani’s team.
Ramani was still a schoolboy when I first met him. A couple of years older than him, I was already in college. When I started playing competitive cricket, it became impossible for me to continue neighbourhood cricket, in which my brother Sivaramakrishnan and Ramani were prominent. Later, when Ramani joined Law College, he became active in politics and actually became a member of the CPI (M). It was only in the 1980s that he slowly weaned himself away from leftist ideology, and started a career in the private sector, looking after the legal affairs of a company associated with the India Cements group, which he was eventually to join and become an important part of.
Ramani was a natural ball player. In tennis, he had a superb top spinning service which he sent down from a considerable height, obtaining impressive bounce and swerve. We loved playing together as a doubles pair, and thanks to his dominance of the court, did not do too badly, in our sometimes raucously competitive recreational tennis. On the few occasions we played against each other he used to get irritated with my high, lobbed returns of serve, not realizing I knew no other way of handling his service. He loved talking tennis as much as playing tennis (even when a game was in progress) and loved telling his opponent what his brilliant shot would have done to him had it landed inside the court! (Despite his best efforts to convert me to golf—he even made me a member of the Tamil Nadu Golf Federation—I never took to the game and so have no way of knowing how he entertained his friends on the course, but I have no doubt that entertain them he did).
Ramani’s sense of humour and penchant for repartee and spontaneous jokes were the stuff of legends. Once he and I were part of an anxious threesome waiting for a fourth to start the morning’s first doubles game. “Let’s hope and pray it is not Sankaran,” Ramani said, referring to a late friend of ours whose tennis was about as exciting as tennikoit. Who should walk in then but Sankaran? Ramani’s response to this setback to our plans for some good tennis was to burst into song. “Ninaithen vanthai, nooru vayathu” he crooned, the first line of a famous film song, which translates to, “I think of you, and here you are! You’ll live to be a hundred!”
Ramani also had a rich collection of jokes and anecdotes, and a phenomenal memory for old real life incidents, strange and funny. He was particularly fond of recalling a moonlight dinner he and a number of our common friends including my brother had at Elliot’s Beach, days after my wedding—the reason why I had excused myself from the fun and games. The party returned well after midnight and realizing they had forgotten a thermos flask at the beach, they decided to enlist my help, because they did not want to walk all the way back to the beach from Shastrinagar, Adyar, and because I was the only one in the gang who could drive a car. So, to the complete amazement of my wife of less than a week, I dashed out of the house along with nine others packed into my father's Standard Herald car, on our mission to recover our lost treasure. Ramani loved to recall how, returning triumphantly from our adventure, we decided to have some tea, knocked on the door of Chandran Tea Stall, woke up Chandran and got him to make us ten cups of tea, with a promise to pay him on the morrow.
Yes, Ramani’s sense of humour made him the hugely popular person he was, but he was also a gregarious and helpful man. I have been the beneficiary of his acts of kindnesses, and so have many other friends I know. He sailed through life’s ups and downs, including his battle with cancer, with a smile on his lip and hope in his heart. Rajan Ramani was truly one of a kind—brilliant, well read and informed, witty, generous, warm and cheerful. A true sportsman on and off the field.
It was Ramani’s move from tennis to golf about a decade ago that reduced the frequency of my contact with him. He had made me a member of Besant Nagar Club in the 1980s and bulldozed me into overcoming my inhibitions enough to become a decent club level player despite my late start, well into my thirties. His love of golf soon turned into an obsession and eventually left him with no time or inclination for tennis. His golf circle grew and grew until in time a whole gang of players began to call themselves Ramani’s team.
Ramani was still a schoolboy when I first met him. A couple of years older than him, I was already in college. When I started playing competitive cricket, it became impossible for me to continue neighbourhood cricket, in which my brother Sivaramakrishnan and Ramani were prominent. Later, when Ramani joined Law College, he became active in politics and actually became a member of the CPI (M). It was only in the 1980s that he slowly weaned himself away from leftist ideology, and started a career in the private sector, looking after the legal affairs of a company associated with the India Cements group, which he was eventually to join and become an important part of.
Ramani was a natural ball player. In tennis, he had a superb top spinning service which he sent down from a considerable height, obtaining impressive bounce and swerve. We loved playing together as a doubles pair, and thanks to his dominance of the court, did not do too badly, in our sometimes raucously competitive recreational tennis. On the few occasions we played against each other he used to get irritated with my high, lobbed returns of serve, not realizing I knew no other way of handling his service. He loved talking tennis as much as playing tennis (even when a game was in progress) and loved telling his opponent what his brilliant shot would have done to him had it landed inside the court! (Despite his best efforts to convert me to golf—he even made me a member of the Tamil Nadu Golf Federation—I never took to the game and so have no way of knowing how he entertained his friends on the course, but I have no doubt that entertain them he did).
Ramani’s sense of humour and penchant for repartee and spontaneous jokes were the stuff of legends. Once he and I were part of an anxious threesome waiting for a fourth to start the morning’s first doubles game. “Let’s hope and pray it is not Sankaran,” Ramani said, referring to a late friend of ours whose tennis was about as exciting as tennikoit. Who should walk in then but Sankaran? Ramani’s response to this setback to our plans for some good tennis was to burst into song. “Ninaithen vanthai, nooru vayathu” he crooned, the first line of a famous film song, which translates to, “I think of you, and here you are! You’ll live to be a hundred!”
Ramani also had a rich collection of jokes and anecdotes, and a phenomenal memory for old real life incidents, strange and funny. He was particularly fond of recalling a moonlight dinner he and a number of our common friends including my brother had at Elliot’s Beach, days after my wedding—the reason why I had excused myself from the fun and games. The party returned well after midnight and realizing they had forgotten a thermos flask at the beach, they decided to enlist my help, because they did not want to walk all the way back to the beach from Shastrinagar, Adyar, and because I was the only one in the gang who could drive a car. So, to the complete amazement of my wife of less than a week, I dashed out of the house along with nine others packed into my father's Standard Herald car, on our mission to recover our lost treasure. Ramani loved to recall how, returning triumphantly from our adventure, we decided to have some tea, knocked on the door of Chandran Tea Stall, woke up Chandran and got him to make us ten cups of tea, with a promise to pay him on the morrow.
Yes, Ramani’s sense of humour made him the hugely popular person he was, but he was also a gregarious and helpful man. I have been the beneficiary of his acts of kindnesses, and so have many other friends I know. He sailed through life’s ups and downs, including his battle with cancer, with a smile on his lip and hope in his heart. Rajan Ramani was truly one of a kind—brilliant, well read and informed, witty, generous, warm and cheerful. A true sportsman on and off the field.
posted by Ramnarayan at 7:58 AM
3 comments
