Bidding adieu to a friend, philosopher and guide

We first met on a sultry evening in June 2004. Though I was reverential, the encounter can be equated to the first meeting between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, straight out of my favourite novel, Pride and Prejudice. The difference was that somehow our roles got reversed, for I played the iconic Fitzwilliam Darcy, filled with pride, and he was Elizabeth Bennet, holding an indescribable prejudice against me.

We parted on a slightly better note without the slightest inkling that this first meeting would be the beginning of a decade-long friendship between us.

Professor DP Sharma was the head of the English department at DAV College, Ambala City, and I joined as an ad hoc lecturer in the same department. Prior to the interview, I went to meet him at his residence in order to get some tips on the questions that might be asked during the interview. Clearly miffed at my nerve, he declared that though he found me intelligent, if he were to sit in the interview, he would not select me for my lack of a regular college degree. I told him though I had done post-graduation through distance education, I was the university gold medallist. This was, however, not enough to overcome his prejudice.

The next day when I went for the interview, he was not there in the panel. Needless to say that I was one of the four candidates selected.

By the end of the first year of my teaching, we were not only on good terms with each other but had developed a strong bond of friendship. He had donned the cap of being my friend, philosopher and guide. I was no more unwelcome at his home. Rather, his wife and he looked forward to my visits in the evening, which became quite frequent. Long hours were spent over numerous cups of tea discussing every conceivable topic under the sun apart from the nuances of literature and the conundrums of life.

He was a man who lived by the strength of his will. When doctors declared that all his coronary arteries were blocked and he will have to undergo a bypass surgery, he refused to do so. His argument was that he had lived his life, fulfilled all his worldly duties and now had no care in the world. So, he would prefer to spend the remaining years of his life without going under the scalpel.

He spent the next few months skimming information on the internet. He devised an exercise and a dietary plan for himself that he followed rigorously and it helped him to go on living for another 11 years without any medical intervention.

Time and tide drifted us apart but could not lessen the strength of our friendship. His death last year was a personal loss to me. He was a man who accepted his frailties in the same spirit as his qualities. He was a man of strengths and weaknesses but a man who never failed to admit his folly. He was a man who, in his own words, admitted that he had lived life to its hilt and had no regrets.

He was a man short in stature but huge in status!

THOUGH HE FOUND ME INTELLIGENT, HE DECLARED THAT IF HE WERE TO SIT IN THE INTERVIEW, HE WOULD NOT SELECT ME