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April 10, 2026
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"What is the use of a book", thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"
"Why did you make the Lady of Shalott, in the illustration, with her hair wildly tossed about as if by tornado? ... I didn’t say that her hair was blown about like that ... Why did you make the web wind round and round her like the threads of a cocoon? ... I did not say it floated round and round her."
"A good illustrator may draw from models but knows how to forget them."
"To illustrate any text is also to interpret it."
"Beatrix Potter portrayed the world from a mouse’s- or rabbit’s- or small child’s-eye view. The vantage point in her exquisite watercolors varies from a few inches to a few feet from the ground, like that of a toddler."
"Can you imagine illustration in modern novels? ... For instance, in Norman Mailer? They would have to be abstracts. Don’t you think? Sort of barbed wire and blotches?"
"Illustration is a very old form, far older than the novel, balanced somewhere in between painting and literature but belonging to neither."
"I cannot imagine how it must feel for an author to see someone else’s interpretation of their own inner vision. I am constantly amazed at how appreciative most of them manage to be."
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.