Mourning Taraki Sivaram
by Prof. Quadri Ismail I remember it well and I remember it poorly - the conversation at the Arts Centre Club. It was quite remarkable, actually, in that bar where more than half the regulars were my friends, in that bar where I am sure I had my first drink - either a rum and coke or a gin and lime, certainly, but again I don't know for sure, although I swear I remember who paid for it - that we appear to have had an uninterrupted conversation. The Author: Sivaram's Uni Mate How do I know that? Because parts of it were published a few days (maybe weeks) later in the pages of The Sunday Times. (On the 27th of September, 1987, for those bibliographically inclined.) I called him Naresh, then, to preserve his anonymity. He was a member of one of the Tamil militant organizations, of that fine generation of Tamil youth that refused to shirk its responsibilities. And more. He was by any standards brilliant. He was that rare undergraduate who, when he dropped na...