ALBERT CAMUS WOULD HAVE MET DR S RADHAKRISHNAN HAD HE LIVED

                                                                        

                                   (AI-generated photo: Camus meets Dr Radhakrishnan)

ALBERT CAMUS WOULD HAVE MET DR S RADHAKRISHNAN HAD HE LIVED 

Had Albert Camus lived beyond 1960, he would almost certainly have found Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan a fascinating figure to meet. Radhakrishnan was not merely India's President and a distinguished philosopher; he was one of the most important modern interpreters of Indian philosophy for the West. His writings on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Hindu philosophy and the dialogue between Eastern and Western thought would have touched precisely those questions that increasingly occupied Camus: the meaning of action, responsibility, moral freedom, spiritual experience, human suffering and the possibility of ethical life without surrendering lucidity.

For the intellectual world of Camus, Radhakrishnan represented an extraordinary bridge between Greek humanism, European philosophy and Indian wisdom. Camus, who had already shown an interest in the Bhagavad Gita and other Eastern texts, might have recognised in Radhakrishnan a thinker capable of discussing the Gita without reducing it either to exotic mysticism or to an abstract religious doctrine. Radhakrishnan's interpretation of Indian thought as a living philosophy, concerned with the transformation of human consciousness, could have provided fertile ground for a profound conversation with the author of The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel.

One can therefore reasonably imagine that, had Camus survived, a meeting with Dr Radhakrishnan would have been one of the intellectual encounters he might have desired. It would have brought together two men who, despite belonging to different civilisations, were deeply concerned with the same fundamental question: how should a human being live in a world marked by suffering, uncertainty and the absence of easy answers? Camus might have approached Radhakrishnan from the standpoint of lucid revolt; Radhakrishnan might have responded from the standpoint of spiritual insight and the unity of existence.

Such a meeting would have been more than a meeting between a French novelist and an Indian philosopher. It might have become a remarkable conversation between the philosophy of the absurd and the philosophy of the Gita, between Camus's insistence on living without consolation and Radhakrishnan's belief in the stronger possibilities of human consciousness.

( Avtar Mota )

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WHY MENTAL COMPATIBILITY IS THE ONLY TRUE RELATION?

                                  

WHY MENTAL COMPATIBILITY IS THE ONLY TRUE RELATION? 

The social order imposes bonds derived from kinship and juridical obligation. Yet the rational faculty inclines toward associations predicated upon truth and psychological compatibility.*  

Thus we encounter the fundamental disjunction between institutional continuity and intellectual affinity.

We are born into a lattice of relationships we did not elect. Kinship is conferred by birth, collegiality by appointment, matrimony often by arrangement, and affiliation by shared interest. From childhood we are instructed in a single ethic: duty, adjustment, compromise, endurance. Yet endurance is not synonymous with living. And physical proximity is not synonymous with communion.The great traditions of both East and West converge upon an uncomfortable observation: *mental consonance constitutes the authentic basis of relation*. Neither social contract, nor familiarity, nor consanguinity, in itself, guarantees it. 

To maintain a measured distance from a relation marked by fundamental incompatibility is not arrogance. It is not egoism. It is, rather, an act of intellectual honesty and self-preservation — a refusal to acquiesce to a state of avoidable and corrosive dissonance.

What the Indian Scriptures Say

(1) The Dhammapada: Guard the Mind, Guard Your Company

The Buddha begins the Dhammapada with this:  

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become." (Dhammapada 1)  

If the mind is everything, then the company we keep is everything too. For the mind is not formed in isolation. It is shaped by the air it breathes, by the conversations, silences, judgements, and values around it. To stay in a relation that dulls, diminishes, or distorts your mind is to betray the very source of your life. That is why the Buddha also said:  

"Better it is to live alone. There is no fellowship with a fool." (Dhammapada 61)  

This is not misanthropy. It is hygiene. The mind, like the body, needs clean air.

(2) The Upanishads: The Self Is the Standard

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad gives an answer that undoes centuries of social piety:  

"Verily, a husband is not dear because he is a husband, but because the Self is dear. A wife is not dear because she is a wife, but because the Self is dear." (2.4.5)  

A role is not sacred in itself. What is sacred is whether the relation nourishes the Self. To maintain a bond that persistently violates clarity, peace, or growth out of mere duty is himsa, violence against oneself. Dharma is not blind endurance. It is alignment with Satya, truth. And truth begins with the mind.

(3) Yoga Vasishtha: Relation as the Air We Breathe*  

The Yoga Vasishtha is perhaps India’s most psychological scripture. Sage Vasishtha tells Sri Rama:  

"Association with the wise gives rise to wisdom. Association with fools gives rise to folly. Therefore, O Rama, choose your company as you would choose the air you breathe." (Vairagya Prakarana)

(4) Advaita 

Real relation cannot be thrust. It grows only in four conditions:  

1. The sunshine of empathy Karuna, the ability to feel another’s inner weather without fixing it.  

2. The oxygen of resonance without fusion: Anukampa asks for nothing in return. Whatever is due comes automatically by the inherent strength of Anukampa. It does not measure a relation in terms of a delivery expectation matrix.  

3. The food of understanding individuality: Prajna, seeing the other as a separate universe, not as your extension.  

4. The nurturing of individual space: Akasha, the freedom to become without surveillance.  

Where these are absent, no certificate, no blood tie, no social pressure can create a real bond. It becomes a cage. And the Yoga Vasishtha is clear: a gilded cage is still a cage.

(5) Bhagavad Gita 

"Sattve sthito buddhir yā pravṛttiṁ ca nivṛttiṁ ca" (18.30)  

"That intellect by which one knows action and inaction, what should be done and what should not be done" is Viveka. Choosing distance is Nivṛtti, knowing what not to engage in.  

"Uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ" (6.5)  

"Lift yourself by yourself." Protecting your own mind from incompatible company is self upliftment, not ego.

The Western Philosophers: From Solitude to Solidarity

(1) Arthur Schopenhauer was blunt:  

"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free."  

"With people of limited capacity, the less one has to do with them, the happier one will be." 

For Schopenhauer, mental energy is capital. To spend it in friction and performance is slow impoverishment. Remaining at a distance is not cruelty. It is conservation.

(2) Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of Gesinnungsgenossen, comrades in disposition. In "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" :  

"One should not crave to be understood. One should only crave to be met by those who are capable of understanding."  

Depth is rare. To dilute yourself to fit a room is to betray your own potential.

(3) Soren Kierkegaard called this "choosing oneself". He writes:  

"The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you will never have."  

To stay in an incompatible bond is to mourn a future that will never arrive. Authenticity demands choice.

(4) Simone de Beauvoir made it ethical. In "The Ethics of Ambiguity" :  

"To will oneself free is also to will others free."  

A relation that requires one person to become smaller is not love. It is mutual imprisonment.

(5) Martin Buber gave us the language to see why so many bonds feel empty. In ,"I and Thou" :  

"All real living is meeting."  

An 'I and It' relation treats the other as a role: "my spouse", "my relative", "my boss". An "I and Thou" relation meets the other as a presence. Mental compatibility is the precondition for 

"I and Thou". Without it, we default to "I and It", and that is where resentment breeds.

(6) Hannah Arendt reminded us of "plurality". In ,"The Human Condition" :  

"Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived."  

Healthy relations do not demand sameness. They honour difference. So compatibility is not uniformity.

(7) Erich Fromm* in ,"The Art of Loving" drew the line:  

"Love is the union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self."  

Where separateness is lost, we get dependence. Where integrity is lost, we get bitterness. Neither is relation.

(8) Albert Camus: The Revolt Against Forced Intimacy:

Albert Camus called modern life "absurd", the human need for meaning meeting a silent universe. In ,"The Myth of Sisyphus", he names three responses: suicide, faith, or revolt.  

A forced relation is killing the truth of your inner experience daily for the sake of continuity. Camus says:  

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."  

By rebellion, Camus means to say: "I will not call this love when my mind starves in it." For Camus, this is not coldness. It is lucidity. Camus asks us to imagine Sisyphus happy, not because the task is pleasant, but because he owns it. He clearly says that we must own the company we keep.

The Test of Compatibility

Mental compatibility is not “we like the same food”. It is tested in four ways:

1. Tempo: Can we sit in silence without anxiety?  

2. Depth: Can we speak of death, failure, and meaning without judgement?  

3. Integrity: After we part, do I feel clearer or more muddled?  

4. Freedom: Do I feel larger, or smaller?  

To remain where you must diminish is to betray yourself and the other. For you are no longer present , only performing.

The lineage

The Dhammapada: guard your mind.  

The Upanishads: know the Self first.  

The Yoga Vasishtha: choose the air you breathe.  

Schopenhauer: guard your mental capital.  

Nietzsche: seek those who can meet you as equals.  

Kierkegaard: choose yourself.  

De Beauvoir: will freedom — yours and theirs.  

Buber: meet, do not use.  

Arendt: honour plurality.  

Fromm: keep your integrity.  

Camus: live honestly.

Conclusion

Ultimately, mental compatibility constitutes the only authentic basis for relation, for it is the sole condition under which one may remain without self betrayal. To remain at a distance from incompatible company is not an act of ego, but of discernment; it is a refusal to acquiesce to needless vexation. Solitude does not destroy us. It is prolonged association with that which is incongruent that diminishes us by degrees. In this, wisdom lies not in endurance, but in the quiet courage to choose alignment over accommodation.

(Avtar Mota)

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CAMUS AND MOULOUD FERAOUN

                                             

(Photo: May 1958, Algiers: Mouloud Feraoun and Albert Camus)

Albert Camus And Mouloud Feraoun

This is a  photo from May 1958 taken in Algiers. On the left is Mouloud Feraoun,  wearing glasses and a light suit. On the right is Albert Camus in a dark suit. By this time Camus had already received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, and both men were prominent writers living through the Algerian War.

Mouloud Feraoun was a Kabyle Algerian teacher and writer. He was born in 1913 in a village in Kabylia. He was Muslim, from a Berber family, and his books like ,"The Poor Man's Son" and "Journal" describe everyday village life, education, and the changes happening in Algeria. He wrote clearly and directly about people, not politics, and was respected as a voice of ordinary Algerians.

Camus and Feraoun had real respect for each other. Camus wrote the preface to Feraoun’s "The Poor Man's Son"  in 1954 and spoke of him with admiration. During the war they both believed in dialogue and in protecting civilians and schools. They met several times in Algiers, including in May 1958, which is when this photo was taken.

In his preface to "The Poor Man's Son,  Camus wrote :

"I love this land, and I am of this land. And because I love it, I do not want it to be torn apart.   Mouloud Feraoun tells us about this land with a truth that is rare. He speaks of the poor, of the village, of children and of work. He does not complain. He shows.There is in this book a dignity and a modesty that command respect. It is the book of a man who has known misery and who has not been embittered by it.  This is the voice of Algeria itself, the silent Algeria, the one that works and suffers and hopes."

Camus  put Feraoun on the map as without Camus’s name, a Kabyle teacher’s novel might never have been published in Paris in the 1950s.  Camus said Feraoun wasn’t writing politics, he was writing life. Daily life. Later in letters Camus called Feraoun “my brother.” Not because they agreed on everything, but because they both loved Algeria and hated seeing it bleed. Feraoun was deeply moved by the preface. He kept it with the book for the rest of his life.

Mouloud Feraoun was assassinated on March 15, 1962 for being moderate and pro talks. He and five other education inspectors were killed at a meeting in El Biar, Algiers, just days before the ceasefire that ended the war. His ,"Journal" , published after his death, remains one of the most important accounts of that period.

( Avtar Mota )

PS

Kabylia Berbers

The Kabyles are Berbers who live mainly in Kabylia, a mountainous region east of Algiers in Algeria. They call themselves Izwawen and speak Taqbaylit, a Tamazight dialect. For centuries they lived in village communities with strong traditions of democracy, agriculture, and olive cultivation. Kabylia is known for its resistance to outside rule , from Romans to Ottomans to French colonization. The region produced major writers like Mouloud Feraoun and Mouloud Mammeri who documented Kabyle life. Today Kabyles are central to the Berber cultural movement, fighting to preserve language, music, and identity. They are largely Muslim, known for hospitality, poetry, and strong community ties.

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HOW CAMUS SPENT NOBEL PRIZE MONEY

                                               

          

HOW CAMUS SPENT NOBEL PRIZE MONEY 

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. It came with about 250,000 Swedish kronor at the time. In today's money that’s roughly:

- About $35,000 - $40,000 USD in 1957

- About $400,000+ USD today after inflation currently.

He didn’t blow it on himself. Here’s how he spent/used it, based on his letters and biographers:

Helping people directly

Camus gave money away quietly. Friends, struggling writers, and families in Algeria and France got help. He hated talking about it. His wife Francine has said he would just send cheques or cash when someone was in trouble.

 Supporting other writers and artists

A part of the prize money went to younger writers and theater people. He funded small theater projects and helped cover costs for people who couldn’t afford to publish or stage work. He never talked about this silent help with  any person. 

Family + Home

He bought a house in Lourmarin, Provence in 1958. It wasn’t fancy ,  a modest village house where he could write. Some of the prize money went toward that, so his family had stability.

Financial Security  for his Mother

He transferred  some  amount to his  mother's account to provide her adequate financial security.

 Paying debts and taxes and investment in his Theatre 

Like most writers he had normal bills. He cleared some debts and set aside some money for taxes. He used somec amount  to finance his own stage adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Demons. He directed it and it opened in Jan 1959 at the Antoine Theatre in Paris. It was a critical success.

Publishing

He financed the "Espoir" series for Éditions Gallimard, where he published Simone Weil’s works posthumously.In 1943, Simone Weil died of tuberculosis at age 34, a fate hastened by her refusal to eat more than the official ration in occupied France. A fiercely principled figure who lived her beliefs without compromise, Weil’s legacy endures through her writings, philosophies, and works like La Passion de Simone. By funding the publishing of the series, Camus ensured her ideas and essays were preserved and made available to the public.

What he didn’t do

No foundation, no charity in his name, no big investments. He told a friend the prize was “embarrassing” because he didn’t feel he deserved it more than others.

( Avtar Mota)

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WHY CAMUS COULDN'T TRAVEL TO INDIA

                                     

The Journey Not Taken: Why Albert Camus Never Travelled to India

Albert Camus died on 4 January 1960, aged 46, in a car crash on the road between Provence and Paris. With him died a series of plans that were only just becoming visible: to step back from journalism and politics, to write differently, and to travel far. Among the places he spoke of was India.  He never went. He did not reject India. He simply ran out of time. 

The reasons are straightforward, though often overlooked: he was overburdened, he was politically trapped, he was in poor health, and he died before the window opened. But the desire was there. It appears in letters, in conversations, and in the tone of his last notebooks. Had he lived, it is almost certain he would have gone.

A Life Without Margin: 1945–1960

To understand why Camus did not travel, one must first understand what filled his years.

Éditions Gallimard. From 1945 Camus worked as lecteur and later responsable de collection at Gallimard. This was not an honorary title. He read three to four manuscripts a week, wrote detailed reports, and managed authors. The post anchored him to Paris. A journey to India in the 1950s required a minimum of two to three months. The publishing house could not spare him for that long, and he could not absent himself without damaging the work he valued.

Algeria

 Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, in 1913. The War of Independence, 1954–1962, consumed his public life. He was attacked from both sides: by the French right for his calls for a “civil truce”, and by the left for not condemning France outright. Between 1955 and 1958 he wrote appeals, articles, and gave press conferences. He felt personally responsible. To leave for India during this period would have been read as desertion. He wrote in 1957: “I have people on both sides whom I love.” That is not a position from which one departs for several months.

Theatre and journalism.

From 1944 to 1947 he edited  Combat. From 1946 to 1953 he directed and adapted plays: Caligula, The Misunderstanding, The State of Siege. Even after leaving daily journalism, he wrote prefaces, gave lectures in Europe and the United States, and engaged in public debate. There was no sustained period of freedom. Travel to India was not a two-week holiday. It was an expedition. Camus did not have the months to give.

He Died Too Young

The most decisive reason is chronological. Camus died at 46. Compare this with his contemporaries. Romain Rolland travelled to India in his sixties. André Malraux made extensive trips in his fifties. Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre went in 1966 and 1967, also in their sixties. 

Camus was only just entering the age when such travel becomes feasible. The Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in December 1957, gave him financial security for the first time. His Carnets  from 1958–1959 show a clear shift. He writes of “silence”, “retreat”, “another rhythm”. He bought a house in Lourmarin. He told friends he wanted to stop writing for the press and return to fiction and essays.

India appears in this late period as a real possibility, not a vague idea. But he had only thirteen months between Stockholm and the crash. That is not enough time to plan, fund, and undertake a major journey, particularly with his health.

The Evidence of Desire: Letters to René Char

The most direct evidence comes from his correspondence with the poet René Char* They met in 1946 and remained close until Camus’ death. Their letters record Camus’ inner life with unusual candour. In 1958 Camus wrote of needing “to go far from Europe, to places where the sun teaches a different patience”. Char later recalled that Camus spoke specifically of Asia. Not as a tourist, but as a thinker seeking a different quality of light and silence. Char wrote after 1960 that they had discussed travel once the Algerian situation was “settled”. He believed Camus meant India, Greece, and other places “where stone and sea teach the same lesson”. 

This is important. Camus was not drawn to India as exoticism. He was drawn to it as a civilisation that had, for millennia, reflected on suffering, on limits, and on how to live without illusion. These were precisely the questions at the centre of 'The Myth of Sisyphus' and  The Rebel.

Health and Practical Obstacles

Camus contracted tuberculosis in 1930, aged 17. It recurred throughout his life. By the 1950s it was managed, but long-haul travel remained a risk. 

A flight to India in 1959 took 20–24 hours with several stops. A sea voyage took three to four weeks each way. For someone with fragile lungs, this was not trivial.

There were also institutional barriers. India in the 1950s was newly independent and intellectually vibrant, but Camus had no university post, no lecture tour, no publisher’s commission to go. He would have had to travel as a private individual, and that required the very thing he lacked: uninterrupted time.

He Travelled Through Reading

Because he could not go physically, Camus went textually.  He read widely in Eastern philosophy and history. In his notebooks from the early 1950s he notes passages on non-violence, on detachment, and on the ethics of action without hope of victory. These themes echo throughout ;The Rebel,  and The Plague. 

For Camus, reading was a legitimate form of travel. In Carnets_he writes: “To read is to go elsewhere without leaving.” India was present in his work as an intellectual horizon. The physical journey would have been the next step.

The Intellectual Climate of the Late 1950s

The late 1950s was a turning point for French thought. After Stalinism and during the Algerian War, Europe no longer appeared as the sole source of answers. Many writers and philosophers began to look eastward.

Camus’ turn was not towards mysticism. He was looking for an ethics that did not depend on God or on History. He was looking for a way to affirm limits, to act without illusion, and to maintain solidarity in a world without guarantees. 

India, in the public imagination of the time, represented precisely that: a long tradition of reflection on suffering and on how to act decently within it. It is not surprising that Camus, in his late notes, should have turned his attention there.

Had he gone in 1961, he would likely not have gone to ashrams. He would have gone to universities, to libraries, to speak with scholars. He had gone to Greece in 1955 for the same reason: to stand in the landscape that had produced a certain kind of thought.

He Would Have Gone Had He Lived

This is not speculation for its own sake. It is what those close to him stated. Francine  Camus, his wife, said after 1960 that he was planning “a long trip, perhaps to Asia”.  Michel Gallimard, who died with him in the car, was a publisher who organised author travel. They were discussing future projects on the day of the accident.  René Char wrote in 1962: “Albert would have gone. He needed the distance.”

The Nobel Prize gave him the means. The end of his editorial duties gave him the time. The conclusion of his most intense political engagement gave him the freedom. The only thing missing was time itself.

Had he lived to sixty, as Sartre and de Beauvoir did, it is very probable he would have made the journey.

What Was Lost: A Speculative Note

We cannot know what Camus would have written after India. But we can extrapolate from the direction of his last years. A Camus in India in 1961–62 would have encountered three things that spoke directly to his work. A practice of restraint and attention. Camus’ “lucidity” has affinities with disciplines of mindfulness and self-observation. He would have recognised a method. Gandhian non-violence  would have complicated his thinking in The Rebel_ about revolt and its limits. Camus was searching for a “no” that did not become a new tyranny. He would have found a living example. Indian philosophy’s long reflection on action and consequence would have spoken to Camus’ central problem: how to act in a world without final meaning.

He would not have become a convert. He was too committed to the body, to the Mediterranean, to the absurd. But he might have written a third major essay, something between 'The Myth of Sisyphus' and a travel journal, on what he called “solar thought”. That book does not exist because the journey did not happen.

Conclusion

Camus did not travel to India for four interlocking reasons: he was overworked, he was politically entangled, he was in poor health, and he died before the window opened.But the desire was real. It is in the letters to René Char. It is in the tone of his last notebooks. It is in the fact that, after the Nobel, he began to speak of withdrawal and distance.

To state that he did not go is factual. To state that he would have gone is to respect the trajectory of his last years.

 Camus’ work is ultimately about how to live with lucidity in a world that offers no final justification. India, for him in the late 1950s, represented a place where that question had been asked for a very long time.

His unwritten Indian journey is, in the end, very Camusian: a plan made in full awareness that time is short and that the world offers no guarantees. One must imagine Camus with his plans still in his hands. And one may reasonably conclude: he would have gone.

( Avtar Mota )

PS

(1)

Though Camus spoke to René Char of a future journey to India , a place of “light and silence” to which he hoped to withdraw once the Algerian crisis was over , Char himself never made that trip. The poet’s life remained rooted in Provence, Paris, and the landscapes of wartime France. Char absorbed the East through reading and correspondence, not through travel. The India that appears in their conversations was therefore a shared horizon rather than a shared itinerary: a desire voiced by Camus, remembered by Char, and left unfinished by both.

In posthumous interviews and memoirs, Char recalled that Camus had spoken of going to Asia “when the time came,” but Char’s own journeys remained within France and Europe. ( Source  René Char, La Parole en archipel (Paris: Gallimard, 1962); and Laurence Campa, René Char: Le poète et la guerre(Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 312–314.

(2)

André Malraux and Albert Camus looked east, but only one of them got there. Malraux travelled to India six times, beginning in 1929, and returned in the late 1950s as France’s Minister of Cultural Affairs. He met Nehru, wrote of Indian art and spirituality in ,' Les Voix du silence', and helped bring Indian exhibitions to Paris. Camus never made the journey. In conversations with René Char after 1957 he spoke of needing to “go far from Europe,” with India in mind as a place of light and silence once Algeria was settled. Malraux’s India was lived; Camus’ remained imagined. Both, however, were part of the same post-war French attempt to think beyond Europe. On Malraux’s visits see Laurence Campa, René Char: Le poète et la guerre(Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 313, and standard biographies of Malraux. On Camus’ desire to travel, see Char’s posthumous recollections in La Parole en archipel (Paris: Gallimard, 1962 )

..

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RAVI TIKOO : THE SHIPPING MAGNATE FROM KASHMIR

                                    

                                ( Ravi Tikoo)

Ravi Tikoo: The Man Who Would Build Giant Ships 

There is a certain breed of entrepreneur drawn not to steady fleets, but to grand gestures at sea. The great shipping tycoons of the 20th century built their fortunes by reading cycles before anyone else did ;  buying cheap, chartering long, and betting on size when the world was still cautious. Names like Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos of Greece turned tankers into empires. J. Paul Getty and Daniel K. Ludwig in America did the same with oil and sheer scale. In Hong Kong, C.Y. Tung and Pao Yue-kong came to dominate dry bulk and tankers in the 1960s and 70s. 

And we could add one from Kashmir, India ;  Ravi Tikoo. A former naval officer turned London broker, he stepped out of the shadows in 1971 and ordered the largest tankers in the world at the time. For a few years, the name "Globtik" stood alongside the giants of shipping, proof that ambition in this industry has never been limited by geography.

Ravi Tikoo was born in 1927, the son of the finance minister of the princely state of Mandi. Ravi Tikoo's father served Raja Joginder Sen , a progressive  ruler who ruled the princely state of Mandi  from 1913 to 1947. Ravi Tikoo grew up in Kashmir, studied mathematics at Punjab University, and joined the Indian Navy. In 1961 he left India for Europe, first settling in Hamburg before moving to London in 1964.

Capt. S K Tikoo informs me this:-

" I  have had a brief meeting with him 1963/64 in Jalandhar. His father with my initials was working there as GM of Masand  Motors. Ravi was still serving in the Indian Navy. When I boasted that I Am  Tikoo with 2 Os.hè just cut me off , saying , I am Tikkoo  with 2Ks and two Os." 

Entering Tanker Finance And Chartering Field 

 London was then the centre of tanker finance and chartering. Tikoo began not as a shipowner but as a middleman, arranging deals between banks, shipyards and oil companies. *Tanker finance and chartering* is the system by which ships are paid for and employed. In chartering, a shipowner does not sell the oil but rents out the vessel to an oil company, trader or refiner. The most common forms are voyage charters for a single trip, and time charters where the charterer hires the ship for months or years at a fixed daily rate. Banks will only lend to build a tanker if such a charter is in place, because the charter income acts as security for the loan. The owner typically puts in 20-30% equity and borrows the rest against a mortgage on the ship, with repayment coming from the charter hire. This is the model Ravi Tikoo mastered in London in the 1960s: he used his skills as a broker to secure long-term charters first, then took those contracts to banks to finance the building of his giant tankers in Japan. In 1967 he founded *Globtik Tankers Ltd* and bought his first tanker in 1968.

The Empire: Globtik and the Megaships

Tikoo rose during a rare period in shipping. The Suez Canal had been closed since 1967 and would not reopen until 1975. With ships forced to sail round Africa, size limits disappeared. Standard tankers grew to 250,000 tonnes and talk began of 500,000 and even 1,000,000-tonne vessels. No established owner would commit. Tikoo did.

In November 1971, at a press conference in London, he announced plans to build two giant tankers in Japan. He had already secured long-term charters. On delivery they would be the largest ships in the world.

The Ships 

1. Globtik Tokyo – 483,684 dwt. Built by IHI, Kure. Delivered February 1973. Cost: about £21 million. 

 

2. Globtik London– 483,960 dwt. Built by IHI, Kure. Delivered October 1973.  

For three years they were the world’s largest tankers, until Shell’s Batillusand Bellamya surpassed them in 1976. A third sister, Nissei Maru_ was built for a Japanese owner in 1975.

Moving to the US 

Tikoo’s wealth grew. He invested in racehorses . 

In March 1977 Tikoo made headlines when his 55,000-tonne Globtik Venus_was held by strikers in Le Havre. He hired fishermen to retake the ship. Citing disillusionment with the British Government, he soon moved to the United States. after moving to the USA, bought Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich, Connecticut for US$3 million. He sold it in 1983 for $11 million. For a brief period, an individual rather than a corporation owned the biggest ships afloat.

He continued to propose large projects: three 600,000-tonne nuclear tankers in 1977, 24 ice-breaking tankers for Alaska in 1979, and a bid to buy Harland & Wolff in 1988 to build the world’s largest cruise ship. None materialised. In the following decades he withdrew from shipping and pursued other private investments.

About Ravi Tikoo, Richard Mineards writes this in February 22, 2022 issue of  the Montecito Journal (Quarterly Magazine)

" I know the Greenwich (Connecticut ) community well and vividly remember attending a caviar and champagne-driven party thrown by Indian-born tycoon Ravi Tikoo, who owned the world’s largest oil tanker, the 477,000-ton Globtik Tokyo, at the time, when he owned 14-bedroom Dunnellen Hall on Round Hill Road, the highest point in Fairfield County. The bash was thrown to celebrate the birthday of his teenage son Vikram, with one of the presents including a gift-wrapped Lamborghini, complete with bow. An avowed Anglophile, Tikoo – he also owned a London home in achingly trendy Bishops Avenue, Hampstead, which he sold to King Khaled of Saudi Arabia in 1976 – wanted to play cricket after tea. A call was placed to Lillywhites in London, then purveyors of sports equipment to the Royal Family, and the gear was put on the Concorde from Heathrow to Kennedy – given he was a regular passenger on the supersonic plane – and his chauffeured Rolls-Royce picked it up enabling us to participate in a match just hours later.

Tikoo later sold the 23,000 square-foot 28-room Jacobean-style home, complete with two Olympic-sized swimming pools, to real estate tycoon Harry Helmsley and his notorious wife, Leona, for $11 million in 1983. He had bought it in 1974 for $3 million, then the highest priced property in the area. Vikram went on to marry a relative of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of the Republic of India."

Family

Ravi Tikoo kept a low public profile and did not build a multi-generational shipping house.  He had two children. His son, Vikram Tikoo, born August 1964, married the daughter of Indian politician Arun Nehru.   The marriage was unhappy and ended in divorce. Vikram  resided in Plantation, Florida, USA. Vikram had some involvement in a later venture linked to his father’s Globtik name, but he did not continue a large shipping business.

Vikram has built a highly successful, global career in financial technology and digital banking innovation rather than maritime commerce.Presently, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Deputy CEO of Salt Bank, Romania's first fully digital, cloud-native banking platform. His appointment focuses on scaling up the bank's digital and next-generation tech architecture. Prior to this, he accumulated over two decades of global tech experience, including serving as Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the fintech giant Fiserv. In 2023, he was recognized by Technology Magazine as one of the Top 10 CIOs in the UK and Ireland. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Maharashtra Institute of Technology and an advanced degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

What Happened to the Business

The Globtik giants were commercially unviable. They were too large for most ports and too expensive to operate. Globtik London_was scrapped in 1985, Globtik Tokyo in 1986. Nissei Maru lasted until 2003, but the era of mega ships ended. The market also turned against Tikoo. Suez reopened in 1975 and the 1973 oil crisis cut demand and freight rates.

Legacy

Ravi Tikoo was not a long-term success, but he was a pioneer. He was one of the first Indians to operate at the centre of global shipping ; raising finance in London, ordering ships in Japan, and chartering them to Western oil majors. His career illustrates both the ambition and the risk of shipping. It is a cyclical, capital-intensive business where backing the wrong size at the wrong time can erase years of profit.

For a few years in the early 1970s, the largest ships in the world carried the name "Globtik". Behind them stood a man from Kashmir who believed he could build giants. Though the ships did not last, the ambition marked him out in the history of Indian enterprise.

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

FIRAQ GORAKHPURI AND ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

                                           

FIRAQ GORAKHPURI AND ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

"Aadmi ka aadmi hona hi mushkil hai Firaq

Ilm o fun, ikhlaaq o mazhab jis ko chaahe poochh lo"......Firaq Gorakhpuri

"For a man to be a human being 

has itself become impossible, Firaq,

Ask whomsoever you will

 about matters of knowledge, 

art, morality, or religion."

The couplet asserts that the ethical and spiritual ideal of Humanity has collapsed. In every public domain , the intellect, the aesthetic, the sacred, and the civic  conduct is no longer guided by fairness or humanity.

Firaq Gorakhpuri’s couplet reads as a precise Indian articulation of Schopenhauer’s pessimism. For Schopenhauer, human beings are driven by a blind Will, and reason is seldom used to transcend it, but rather to rationalise ego, appetite, and domination. Firaq observes the same failure across the four pillars of civilisation. When he says "ask whomsoever you will about ilm, fun, ikhlaaq, mazhab",  he is stating that no institution remains uncontaminated. Knowledge has become sophistry, art has become display, morality has become convenience, and religion has become faction. Thus "to be a human being"to act with compassion, truthfulness, and self-restraint  has become the most arduous vocation. In Schopenhauerian terms, this is the tragedy of a species endowed with intellect yet enslaved by Will, wherein culture exists without cultivation.

Firaq’s poetry carries every element requisite for classification as literature of humanity. He is tall in vision, indic in sensibility, full of clarity and profound in moral judgement. His idiom is Hindustani, but his concern is universal: the dignity of the human person. He does not lament from cynicism, but from a classical humanist standard against which he measures the age and finds it wanting. Like Schopenhauer, he diagnoses the disease of the age; unlike the German philosopher, he retains the lyric faith that poetry itself may be one of the few remaining spaces where "aadmi ka aadmi hona" is still possible. It is this fusion of ethical severity with aesthetic grace that places Firaq within the lineage of world literature concerned not with nations or sects, but with man as such.

( Avtar Mota)

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.