‘Keshav Desiraju, a rare intellectual of great personal integrity’
The Hindu
He left a deep imprint on everyone who knew him, says N. Ram
Former Secretary of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Keshav Desiraju, who passed away earlier this month, was a rare intellectual of great personal integrity and moral independence, N. Ram, Director, The Hindu Group Publishing Private Limited, said on Friday.
Speaking at an event organised online by the Chennai Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) to pay tributes to the late IAS officer, Mr. Ram said Desiraju left a deep imprint on everyone who knew him or encountered him.
![](/newspic/picid-1269750-20250217064624.jpg)
When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.