Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/439

 feel it a shockingly great blow that has come too suddenly. It is like a bolt from the blue. Yet, as we have just been rightly reminded, under the oppression of heavy sorrow we owe it as a duty to ourselves, as well as to those whom the loss so dreadfully and terribly crushes, that we should express the very meagre and inadequate but none the less very hearty sympathy due to them.

It has been my melancholy privilege to have known the deceased for a longer period than almost every one else with perhaps the exception of him who has been these eleven years and more his chum in company and his yoke-fellow in office—I mean, the Assistant Dewan. My knowledge of and love for Mokkapati Subbarayadu date back to 1894, when he was a student of the Fifth Form in the School Department of Noble College at Masulipatam. He drew my attention first on an occasion which was rather the reverse of this one, when we were giving an affectionate send-off to one of my colleagues going out on furlough. Subbarayadu, with his instinctive aptitude for Telugu verse, though yet in