Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Another classmate has passed into the mist of time.

This morning, a classmate of mine, had informed me about the passing away of R Gopalakrishnan whose roll number was 290 in school. This meant that he'd joined two years before me into class V. He did not stay very long in school and had left towards mid '67 due to some nagging medical problems though there were rumours that he'd gone into the Loyola school, quite in demand then, due to its haloed status!

RGK, as he was popularly known among us, used to sport the Dev Anand type of 'puff' when he combed his hair. He used to speak with a lot of emotional expressions on his face and on the games field, he was a good footballer. I must confess here that we're not the best of friends in school as he was in 'Shivaji' house while I was in 'Prasad' and each of us had our own circle of friends!

I'd heard from mutual friends that RGK'd got into the IAS cadre as we'd lost touch in the interim. In early Dec '95, when I was to take over the command of my ship, I'd decided to drive down to Kochi stopping at vantage points after each day's drive of about 700 kms. One of the stops that I'd zeroed in was Bhopal because RGK was the Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister. I'd called him up to take in the directions to his house and his words, "Rajeev, just drive into the city and give me a call. Leave the rest to me and make no mistake, you're staying with us", echo in my ears as I punch in these thoughts! That I could not make the trip ultimately because I'd to join my ship earlier, is another story altogether.

Subsequently, while we're in Delhi we used to meet - rather infrequently at our class/school get togethers - firstly, because he was busy thanks to being in the PMO and secondly, because the dreaded cancer was slowly gnawing away at his innards. He was a proud man and he did not want us to sympathise about his discomfort and began to distance himself away from us. And he died, sometime in the wee hours of this morning, in his sleep. He was not communicating for the last three days, I'm told.

RIP, RGK. May God give adequate strength to Sudha, Amulya and Aditi to tide over these difficult times! And my humble prayers to a worthy classmate.   

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