Eulogy for Pushy

AN OLD SCHOOL GENTLEMAN

Pushy Chopra is no more. He had struggled with Covid. I anchored many of Pushy’s seminars on defence.

He was not only a valued colleague but one my closest childhood buddies since our schooldays.

He was ebullient, bubbly, outspoken, rambunctious, with a Falstaffian Hail of a voice. He suffered no fool gladly even while he remained ever the compassionate gentleman...and chivalrous to a fault.

He felt passionately for his family and was the eternal mother-hen. He adored his childhood home in the misty effervescence in Kasauli to which he summoned me for a first visit many moons ago, where we consumed gallons of good Scotch and barbecued pork chops with his beautiful wife Deepak and sister the vivacious Gugu and her gentle giant of a husband, the expansive Anup (now also gone) son of the legendary Sardar Karnail Singh, former chairman of the Railway Board who had the most amazing wooden bar laden with foreign wines tucked away in his luxurious railways saloon.

Pushy was a diehard liberal who detested political tyrants, bigotry, intolerance.

Do you know that he loved Shakespeare and could quote from John Donne?

In the Doon School Pushy (74-T), Askari Imam (68-T), and I (155-T) were known as the “Tata House Trio”, all of us unregenerate rebels. 74 and 68 now both gone.

My youngest daughter Samira was married at Piffer Post, Pushy’s get-away spot from Delhi’s madness, small farmhouse in the capital’s outskirts where generals, air marshals and admirals rubbed shoulders with ruffian writers like me and Ajay Shukla and Hari Dang and Dilip Bobb.

Just as Pushy and I grew up together and reunited after my 20-year sojourn in the US, so did my children Arjun, Ayesha and Samira grow up with Pushy’s kids, the “Choppy” boys, Vikram, Karan and Prem.

Cheers, Pushy! May you ever keep raging against the dying of the light.