In Prof G Venkatasubbaiah's legacy, an abiding love for Kannada and awareness of its role in a globalised world

When I learnt of Prof G Venkatasubbaiah’s death, my first reaction was that of surprise. Looking back, I see that I first “met” GV when I began teaching myself to read Kannada properly several years ago. My greatest aid at the time was the Kannada Ratnakōsha, a pocket-sized Kannada-Kannada dictionary first brought out in 1973 by the Kannada Sāhitya Parishat, Karnataka’s leading literary organisation. With profound respect for his mentors and their vision; his deep and abiding love for the Kannada language, its history, and its literary tradition; his predilection for scholarship and teaching; and his unrelenting dedication towards the Kannada language’s development and growth, it was only fitting that GV came to be known as the shabdarshi — a ‘walking dictionary’, and the undisputed doyen of modern Kannada lexicography. GV’s magnum opus would be the approximately 10,000-pages long Kannada-Kannada Nighanṭu, published in eight volumes between 1970 and 1993.