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April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"In 2000, I became a vegetarian. The guys in poker mocked me. There was this idea that "real men eat meat" and they'd eat piles of crap around the table, like mounds of dead animals every hour. … I became vegan in 2006 when I started taking healthy eating seriously. … The other players are a lot more accepting now, they embrace my veganism! … Poker has changed, in the past, high profile players were obese, now they're fit. They've swapped their moobs for pecs. Players now are educated people, they're smart, they do the research … Although my veganism started out absolutely about health, it's also become about the environment and animal cruelty. The way animals are treated and the conditions are atrocious. They're force fed steroids, the chickens are de-beaked. You end up eating sick, diseased chickens because they're living in shit. It's like a holocaust on animals."
"As I learned more about veganism, and animal farms and the way animals were treated, it just disgusted me to the point where I could never imagine eating animals again."
"You need to understand that everything you do at the poker table, conveys information. You can't be all loosy goosy, eating a sandwich, or checking your phone."
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.