First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
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"Fiona Shaw, in Jonathan Miller's production, is the best shrew I have seen. She starts off in a mustard yellow dress with a mustard sharp tongue and suitably pointed features screwed up into a vexed expression. She is given to blood-curdling yells, intimidating her family, hand-cuffing her sister and chopping bits off her ginger plait when particularly aggravated. She is a pain to behold and to hear."
"I used to joke about having a "bee in my Barnet," now I am more likely to bring news about bees in Barnet."
"Rufus Norris's ambitious production is not about safety and is not for the faint-hearted. He is more interested in the darker, distressing aspects of fairytale than in cheap Christmas gags. As the story unfolds, it becomes more gruesome, involving a horrifying ogre (congratulations to Nicholas Beveney's hairy monster) and a magnificent ogress (Daniel Cerqueira) who becomes, in this version, Sleeping Beauty's mother-in-law and tries to eat her own grandchildren. I suspect the younger members of the audience weren't half as troubled as I was."
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.