| It is not possible to write about Romesh without simultaneously thinking of Raj. They represented a joint integrity and complimentarity, such as is difficult to find. In that sense perhaps, it is only right that Romesh should have left within months of Raj's death: more, that he should have died as he did, in dignity, in full possession of all his faculties, without any lingering ailment, and doing that which he most enjoyed; exchanging ideas. On 21 August, we dined together, in company that was immersed in the issues of the day and which demanded of Romesh all his clarity of thought. Less than twenty four hours later he died in his study.
There are no cameos from his life which can be conveniently lifted to illustrate the whole; a single photograph will just not do; the complete photo-album is needed and that is not possible. Yet what does come back vividly to mind, as a kind of a break in the pattern of their lives, is that cataclysmic first week of November 1984. Delhi was then the scene of one of the most barbarous acts of calculated violence that independent India has witnessed. In the midst of that madness Romesh expressed his concern in words of passionate anger, struggling to re-establish order and justice. He sought action: propelling a Citizens' Committee into launching its own enquiry; convening another to address them-selves to the challenges thrown up. It was Raj who was broken and despairing — "Romesh is seeking to escape the trauma in action," she said. "I am haunted by altogether a different fear. Tell me, are the streets of Delhi ever again going to be entirely safe for a bearded sikh?"
The pathos of the question foretold her death, though we failed to recognise it as such then. For her, November 1984 was an emotional and a spiritual trauma, turning subsequently into a physical malignancy which finally consumed her young body. Whilst Raj struggled with the ravages of cancer, with rare courage and poise, Romesh then demon strated his patient and caring side. When she died in April this year, Romesh said, "I have lost my faculty of thinking. I no longer know how to think. Raj was my sounding board, without my even knowing it. Now that touchstone of my thought has gone, and with it, my touch."
Romesh was essentially, and by nature, an iconoclast; a doughty warrior for individual liberties and dignity (a distinction which not many make), a life long crusader for the independence of media, freedom of press and free speech. He loathed humbug, political, social or intellectual; he was unrelenting when it came to exposing follies, individual or institutional. His thoughts and his pharaseology, like his personality, were large and sonorous; there was never in them any carping meanness or shrill edges. Prejudiced he could be and was; whereafter, walrus like, it was difficult to shift him; but challenge him you always could, and if you did, then his thrusts could be rapier like. His faults were as large as his personality, but he could never be faulted for smallness of spirit.
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