Almost three score years ago sometime in October of 1964, on one wet and cold evening, a group of 60 young boys between ages 10 and 12, landed at a little known and secluded hill station. Thus began their sojourn at a place that was to be their cradle and playground, the crucible and the theatre, where their characters were to be crafted, their personalities moulded, and their value systems cast.
For them, it was six years of togetherness at this remarkable school which was technically not a ‘Public School’ but offered far more than the best and most elitist school could contrive to do. It was at this place that friendships were forged, fostered and frozen in stone. Aspirations and ambitions, dreams and desires, fears and tribulations were shaped and shared in those six years. Life was exciting and fun filled. The impatience and indiscretions, misadventures and misdemeanours, impetuousness and impertinence as also creativity and courage of early adolescence also found full expression. Those days were thrilling and terrifying.
It was here that friendship with Anshuman was born and bloomed. It began gradually but its intensity grew as the years passed by. A whole book could be written about the emotions and sentiments that bound us together in those years.
And then we parted ways, as we graduated from the school. Our destinies took us to different paths and so did our careers. We were still in touch but the demands of higher studies and the ambition to achieve a significant station in life consumed most of our energy and time. But the warmth of feelings never for a moment diminished or attenuated.
I joined the IAS, he became a banker only to subsequently migrate to Canada and then to US and chose academics as his life’s purpose. For decades we were unaware of each other’s lives. And yet, remarkably that feeling of closeness and the soul-connection never faded nor diluted.
After decades we met in 2008 in Delhi. He was visiting India. I was in Delhi occupying the top most echelon of Indian bureaucracy. He found me out and we met. The meeting was cathartic, so much to share and so much to complain. We talked for hours, so much has changed in our lives. Those few days were in every respect a replica of the time spent together in the school.
We parted with a promise to keep in touch but we were both busy people. The promise could be only partially kept but the warmth and affection of friendship got reinforced. Maturity and years of wisdom added a new dimension to this relationship. Since then, we spoke to each other from time to time, but we never met again.
Then Corona visited all of us. The world around each of us transformed in a few brief months. I was critically ill. So was perhaps he. We lost touch. I survived. He struggled.
And then he chose to depart, advisedly so perhaps. I came to know about it much later through our other school mates. It was as devastating as it was unbelievable. What pained me most was that since October of 22, I was just in the vicinity, may be an hour ago, in New York. I could have met him. This remains a very agonising thought, one that will painfully endure for ever.
There is one aspect of his persona that has touched all of us. His , geniality, his persuasive smile and his soft speech. And yet while his geniality was infectious, his intellect was enormous. Often, it appeared to me that his gentleman-ness and soft spoken-ness masked the keenness and brilliance of his sharp mind. I had never perused his academic work but after his death I chose to go through some of them and I was amazed at the depth and sensitivity of his papers on a subject, I still consider esoteric. I will therefore be failing if I do not mention about this aspect of his life that never merited my attention while he was alive, but one, which more than in one way defined his being.
He is gone and now we have with us merely his memories and a soul-searing feeling of a loss that is felt deep within. But one realisation emerges electrically from the cascade of images that float before you as you talk and think about him, it is that friendship does not need physical proximity. It can and it does endure longer in death than in life.
A precious part of me, however, is lost for ever. And yet, as Patricia Fleming will have us believe,
I’ll hold tightly to your memory
And forever miss you so.
But I’ll trust that God must need you more,
And I will gently let you go.
scribo ad LX 