As time goes by..

We began to work on this commemorative web-site a few months after Sunder’s passing. Our nephew Balaji (Narayanan Srivatsan) and our friend Kaushik Raha had worked hard to get it ready in time for its ‘inauguration’ at a gathering in Sunder’s memory in New York in March 2015. Earlier this year (2017) we had the web-site re-designed, and added to it a few more pieces of information, a few more late-arriving eulogies and a few more photographs. It is comforting to think of this as an evolving, open-ended project, one which we can change or add to over the years; it is not a memorial that will gather dust.

We hope that this section will serve as a blog for anything you would like to share—reminiscences of Sunder, photographs, reflections — drawing on memory, archives, your reading…For our part we will post, on an occasional basis, our thoughts, news, and our never-ending discoveries about Sunder.

July 17is the anniversary of Sunder’s passing, hard as it is to believe that it is now three years since he left us. We reproduce below some notes marking the passage of time.

–Raji and Kaushik
July 17, 2017

Kaushik’s first anniversary note

Mike Fischer’s dedication

Dhanam Sanjeevi’s tribute

Loyola College 1966 Annual magazine

My brother S. Subramanian’s book Inequality and Poverty A Short Critical Introduction (Springer, 2019) is dedicated to Sunder.

From the Archives: Photo of Sunder with the Dy Auditor General of Pakistan on a visit to Jaipur. Sent to us by his colleague, Mr Niranjan Pant.

These affectionate reminiscences of Sunder’s visit to his aunt Lalitha and family were sent by his cousin Indu

Indu writes: ‘Such was his meticulousness that he signed every single book for me’

This is a short excerpt from Hisham Matar’s memoir of his father, The Return (2016), which appears on page 145.

Kaushik was promoted to Professor in June 2017, an event whose happiness was mingled with the sadness of Sunder’s absence. My brother Subbu’s note on the occasion.

This photo was sent by Sunder’s aunt Kalpakam (Kappu) on Sunder’s third anniversary. She wrote: ‘Can’t believe that it is three years since Raju left us.  Even now memories of our childhood and our later association are all still fresh in my mind. I had mentioned to you also earlier of my surprise bumping into him at Arlington Cemetery, way back in 1980. Attached is the photo taken at that occasion.’

These are the last few pages of Kaushik’s book Pharmocracy (2016), which he was finishing up in 2014 during Sunder’s last illness. The book discusses at length the legal battles in Indian courts over the patent rights of a potent new anticancer drug.

July 17, 2020

Sunder’s sixth anniversary. Raji painted this for the occasion, from a photograph taken by their close friend Elaine Freedgood.

On July 27, 2019 August 2019 the extended family of Sri A.V. Ramalinga Iyer got together to commemorate his life. AVR was Sunder’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side.

In 2020 we lost two of Sunder’s beloved aunts, Meena periamma and Sundari chitti.

July 17, 2021

Sunder’s seventh anniversary. It has been a long and difficult year, through the pandemic, filled with loss for so many families. We lost two people who were beloved to Sunder, S. Venkatraman and Ameeruddin Ahmad. We miss them both, deeply.