Musquitoes At Mambalam - Stories by SVV - A Must Read & Enjoy with a Hearty Laugh - Mosquitoes At Mambalam

This novel Mosquitoes At Mambalam written by Famous humorous Writer S.V.V and published by The Alliance Company. A must read and enjoy with a hearty laugh. Thought provoking Humour, Soul searching Satire in Lucid Indian Style. Laughter is good for you.

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SVV (25.08.1880 - 31.05.1950): The intriguing initials which deligted a generation of sober and serious reader of 'The Hindu' from about the mid - 1920's to 1930's. The initials belonged to Shri S.V.Vijayaraghavachariar, an advocate from Thiruvannamalai. His prolific writing in "The Hindu" and "Ananda Vikatan" on the everyday events of life with a humorous perspective have delighted generation of readers.

Of S.V.V., the english essayist who made his bow regularly in "The Hindu' an english civilian of the time Hilton Brown said in the course of an address before the East India Association: 

"There is a man in Madras called S.V.Vijayaraghavachariar who is writing the most delicous stuff light as a feather, satirically humorous, not untender, most intimately revealing the Hindu life; splendidm spiteful stuff which can bear direct comparison of mutatis mutandis with the work of our own E.M.Delafield."

These collections are to be read, reread, treasured and read again and again. You can be sure to be delighted every time you read them.

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SVV

Pure humour, humour without malice, is hard to find in a world as seious as ours, and the passing of a humorist is a personal loss to those who have laughed with him when he was alive and giving of his best. This paper can take special pride in the fact that Mr.S.V.Vijayaraghavachari first delighted the public in its columns and that it was as a journalist that he won acclaim throughout South India. S.V.V. was popular for much the same reason as Charlie Chaplin, that is, he took the small man, the house-holder with a load of troubles on his back, and showe him as the victim of the minor worries of life. This figure, which the average reader could recognise as himself, was highly resilient, capable of laughing at his mishaps and enjoying them in recollection. The social analyst would find that S.V.V. was a conservative in outlook, laughing most heartily at the paraphernalia of modern life, the motor car, shoes and sandals, the fashionably dressed woman, the college man, and it must be added, the very news papers in which his articles appeared. "Travelling in a tram or train" (he once wrote) "news papers come in handy to spread on the bench to sit on so as not to soil the trousers. If an ink bottle is overturned in the table you crumble up a newspaper and rub hard till the stain is removed." He went on to remark that newspapers were the favourite diet of donkeys buy he concluded with newspapers were indispensable, for "without a newspaper how shoudl we know who died when?" Alas, today the papers mourn the death of this liveliest of writers. But, S.V.V. has assured himself of immortality through his many books and novels, some in an English which is simple and expressive and some in excellent Tamil. He has had many imitators but nobody has equalled his gaiety. The best way to keep his memory green would be to publish a uniform edition of his writings, some of which give a better picture of our changing society than the heavier works of economists and statisticians.

(THE HINDU - from an editorial 02.06.1950.)

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CONTENTS:

01.Mosquitoes at Mambalam; 

02.A spot of advice; 

03.Vending in trams; 

04.A commercial civilization; 

05.The queer old man; 

06.A city clerk; 

07.Employed at last; 

08.A picnic jaunt; 

09.Sees of socialism; 

10.The poor parent.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: S.V.Vijayaraghavachariar (1880-1950), Indian essayist, columnist. A practising lawyer at Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, south India, he won wide acclaim as a writer of essays in a lighter vein, first in the monthly Everyman's Review, and later in the Saturday pages of the Madras newspaper, the Hindu. His initials, S.V.V., were his nom de plume, throughout his literary career. S.V.V's 'An Elephant's Creed in Court', a scintillating satire on the credal war between the two subsects of Vaishnava Hinduism, appeared in Everyman's Review in the early 1920s. While humour that delights in the incongruous, the ludicrous, and the droll was his native gift, he could ring other notes as needed, and on the strength of the large number of his 'loose sallies of the mind' during the 1920s and 1930s, S.V.V. often provoked comparison with 'Elia' (Charles Lamb), E.M. Delafield, 'Y.Y.' (Robert Lynd) and Jerome K.Jerome. In his regularly weekly appearance in The Hindu, S.V.V. became almost an institution, a subject of animated discussion in lounge or club, at the Marina Beach, or wherever his fans happened to meet. Essays such as 'Don't Meddle with Coffee', 'Buttons', 'Dreams', 'Worry Over Slippers' and 'Country Cousin Abroad' were applauded for their humour and humanity, whimsy and wisdom. S.V.V's humour, it was noted, enhanced rather than diminished its subject, and he found occasion for laughter even in the weary, stale and seemingly profitless things of everyday life. In his late later years, S.V.V. moved to Madras and devoted himself entirely to writing in English and Tamil, publishing several volumes of essays and light fiction. Among his English titles are Soap Bubbles, More Soap Bubbles, The Holiday Trip, and Mosquitoes in Mambalam. Whether in English or Tamil, the S.V.V flavour and its tonic quality were the same. Never vulgar, cheap or dull, the essays seemed to the discriminating to be the distilled essence of the experience of innumerable middle-class homes in south India.