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April 10, 2026
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"Planning a good menu demands experience, a certain amount of knowledge and a good deal of thought. I'm only half-joking when I say that learning how to order well in Chinese restaurants is one of my life's proudest achievements."
"But the fact remains that you can't fully appreciate Chinese gastronomy without sharing in the pleasures of the quite, the plain, the qingdan as well as the sweet and sour and spicy. Plain dishes are like the empty space that frames and highlights a work of art, They are the necessary corrective to the wild excitements of flavour, restoring physical balance and mental equanimity."
"Like many Chinese people, particularly those of the older generation, she didn't show her love for me by hugging or soliciting emotional outpourings, but through food and fussing."
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.