Vinay Gidwani - K. Sivaramakrishnan Reflection

Vinay Gidwani
University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Shivi may not remember. But back in 1995, as I was pondering how to write about the transformation of an agrarian landscape in western India, he recommended two books to me: Paul Carter’s The Road to Botany Bay and Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory. Turns out that memories are like landscapes too. Time and the forces that shape our lives dull many of its topographic features, alter others, and cast some into sharp relief. That year, Shivi and I were both on the famous climb known as “writing the dissertation”. A few months in, the weather turned for me – mentally and emotionally, that is – and I found myself stalled at one of those nowhere outcrops, unsure how to continue the ascent.  

I was suffering from a massive writing block. Shivi and I used to talk at least once or twice a week in those days, and I vividly recall asking him one day, full of desperation, how he did it. Shivi was writing with metronomic regularity. “Arre yaar” he said in his annoyingly blunt way. “Isme kya badi baat hai?” (“What’s the big deal?”). “Write a thousand words every day and before you know it, you’ll be done!” As you know, Shivi went on to write a two-volume dissertation in five parts, some 800 pages long. I squeezed out just over 240 pages and titled it “Fluid Dynamics” – a lie of the first order because it had nothing to do with that brand of physics, and its writing was anything but. For those like me who either write in bursts of manic energy or through tortured deposits of prose, Shivi’s disciplined approach – careful, methodical, rigorous, punctual, the habits of a conscientious and driven IAS officer – felt alien; a source of envy and aggravation.  

But since memories can be inconstant, I went back to my acknowledgments in the glibly titled “Fluid Dynamics” to discover what, if anything, I said about Shivi then. I was hoping I hadn’t dissed him. To my relief, here’s what I said: “K. Sivaramakrishnan – accomplished scholar, quietly activist, and loyal friend – was my backbone through times rough and calm. He listened and advised, taught and supported. Although we travelled vastly different intellectual routes – and as a result were able to critique each other – it was always with surprise and joy that I discovered our destinations were not far apart after all.”

I know we are all gathered today to acknowledge Shivi and the profound influence he has had on many of us in ways large and small. (By the way, I asked Shivi how many students he has advised: 42 PhDs as adviser or co-adviser; another 40 or so PhD committees; external examiner for 20 more non-Yale PhDs; aside from mentoring 50-60 postdocs through Agrarian Studies and South Asian Studies.) Shivi’s generosity is formidable. But I would be remiss not to mention what else I said in my dissertation acknowledgments. About the dazzlingly talented Bala, Shivi’s rock and inspiration – and, in my estimation, the giant reason why we’re here at this wonderful event. I wrote this in my acknowledgments about her: “Bala juggled the role of friend, counsellor and parent. Her humor and energy were always infectious, and her affection for me deeply reassuring. Bala and Shivi, and their children, Amy and Bambi, were my family in graduate school.” Bala, as many of you know, has already reincarnated herself multiple times in this life – and brilliantly in each instance! From a talented IAS officer in Bengal, to a doctorate in plant physiology on infections in the eastern hemlock, to a nurse, and now an expert teacher of meditation.

All said and done, Shivi and I have known each other for almost 37 years. We were together in Jim Scott’s inaugural agrarian studies seminar. We have written together, and planned projects that went nowhere. (As more people sought to collaborate with Shivi and rightly so, I was – sigh! – sidelined…)

As some of you know, Shivi’s an early riser and expects everyone else is too. I was in California for my PhD and later in Vancouver for a postdoc. Shivi would call at 6:30am. I would groggily pick up the landline (no cellphone in those days) and hear the familiar refrain, “So rahe the kya?” (“Were you asleep?”) – before launching with boyish enthusiasm into something he had just read or a piece of salacious academic gossip. When we were younger (he had a full head of hair, I wasn’t grizzled and white), we used to have animated discussions about books and scholars who were the “next big thing” in the peculiarly parochial world of academia – and often found ourselves, in the cruelty and exuberance of youth, launching into a cutting rush to judgment.  

Still waters run deep, as the saying goes. Shivi projects equanimity even when there is deep emotional churn inside. He also has a memory like an elephant. Again, aggravatingly for someone who regularly forgets, Shivi remembers people, places, events, and ideas like nobody’s business. It also means you don’t want to piss him off – because he’ll stubbornly remember!

I’ll end with this. We all need an Archimedean point in our lives, to stage and anchor all our other undertakings in life. I first met Shivi and Bala in September of 1989. I had just turned 24 and had very recently returned to Yale to resume my master’s degree having taken the year off to be with my mother as she fought and lost the battle to late-stage cancer. My father had died two years earlier. I was at an emotional precipice, inward and aggressively alone. Bala and Shivi, in ways only they can, let me know they were here for me. They gently but insistently invited me home. On weekends I would up Prospect Street to their apartment in the married student housing complex for idli, sambhar, upma, and the other ordinary comforts of home.  

They were my Archimedean point. And it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for them then. So, thank you Shivi … and congratulations on this richly deserved tribute!  

May 8, 2026

Vinay Gidwani

University of Minnesota