Forget '62

The talk I have to deliver is at the Town Hall, an impressive building, alongside a large and extremely picturesque rectangular tank with a long series of steps leading down to it. The tank was built by the zamorins of Calicut several centuries back. The Town Hall has a seating capacity of 2,000 and, not surprisingly for a 90 per cent literate state where the main preoccupation of the people is to talk, listen and read, it is packed. To my consternation, I find a large photograph of V.K. Krishna Menon, the late defence minister, looking down on me to the right of the dais. It turns out that he is Kozhikode's most famous son, though he left the town when still in his teens for England, where he became one of the founders of Penguin Books and our first high commissioner. There is a park named after him, where a large statue in black stone stands. A feeble attempt to question Menon's greatness by pointing out that he may have been responsible for the Indian army's debacle at the hands of the Chinese in the Himalayas during the winter of 1961-62 is met with severe frowns.