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April 10, 2026
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"Ready to take Rats-bane for Sugar, Hemlock for Parsly, and the Berries of deadly Night-shade for Cherries."
"Night-shade is very dangerous of what sort soever it be, taken either in the Roote, Hearb, or Fruit; All the kinds excite and provoke to sleepe; The Ordinary and Common Night-shade is lesse pernitious: And those which are called Hortensis, and Belladonna, are the most poysonous and mortall, especially their Fruits; Causing terrible Dreames, strange Phansies, Alienation of the Mind, deepe sleepe, &c."
"I may assure your correspondents, by my own personal testimony, that the plant growing in , from which, but but probably erroneously, the valley in which it stands is said to have taken its former name, is the true “deadly nightshade,” Atropa belladonna. The other plant known as “nightshade,” and sometimes called “deadly nightshade,” ', probably grows there also. It is a very common plant, to be found in all parts of England. But the Atropa grows among the ruins in some abundance, and on my last visit I gathered it in full fruit, its glossy dark purple berries, in shape and colour not unlike a blackheart cherry and with a sweetness of taste by no means disagreeable, presenting a fatal attraction to the ignorant or unwary."
"BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues."
"Stinking’st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite—"
"No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;"
"Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations."
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.