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Sunday, January 11, 2015

My Friend, Prakash Desai

Too Precious to Die

Prakash Desai basically knew everything and everyone accepted this…until I came along one cold February evening in 1977. He was  a distant cousin, who staked a claim on me as an annoying older brother; a Nehruvian socialist, who believed in the commanding heights because he hated private enterprise; a member of Baroda’s famed Renaissance Club that had little do with the arts and culture but more inclined to the worldview of Lenin and Stalin. He was as amazing a mass of contradictions as his beloved higher Hinduism he wrote copiously about.

I challenged him on all counts and he patiently heard me out, only to yell at me about my capitalist mindset and, he probably died on January 6, 2015, believing I hated the poor. “Not the poor, Prakash,” I would say to him of an evening in his study or in my garden in Chicago, “but against poverty that your stupid statist system created and thrives on.” He would fly into a rage, “Mr Rajiv Desai, you are in the presence of an advocate of compassion and equity; take your goddamn capitalism and shove it.”

“OK, Prakash,” I would say, “Lighten up. Let’s just have another drink.”

For all of that, he was a bon vivant. In his bar, there were the finest wines, the choicest whiskeys and he mixed a phenomenal vodka martini. Always well dressed, perfectly trimmed beard and thinning hair ever since I knew him, he was charisma personified. He was always Olivier while I was looking at Sean Connery. He was not always but sometimes infuriated when I teased him about taking the boy out of Baroda but never the Baroda out of the boy.

Baroda was where we both went to school ten years apart; he embraced it while I was much more about Bombay, where I grew up and Surat, where I was born. It also happened he was related to me through my father’s family of traditional middle-class Gujarati Nagar Brahmins from Baroda; my Surat connections were wealthy influentials that participated in the freedom movement and had national and international connections. Plus, as I told him, our (Surat) food was French to my paternal family’s (Baroda) food that was Slavic by comparison. “And in any case, Prakash, I’m from Bombay where we were urban sophisticates.”

For 38 years Prakash and I jousted on ideology and lifestyle. He had friends who would create and spread stories about me. He even co-opted not just my wife but also my mother and her sister. “Prakash is right,” my immediate family members would say, “Rajiv is very ‘aristocratic’ in his demeanor.” He also said I was more a Christian than a Hindu. In that sense, he was a Gandhian satyagrahi because he knew how to provoke.

It took me a few years to realize that he was a keen psychiatrist because he analyzed my every response to conclude that I was alienated from my father’s family, from my Nagar Brahmin origin and from the larger Hinduism into which I was born. He also said I embraced Western thinking at a very tender age because of the Theosophists on my mother's side of the family, Surat and Bombay. And therefore married a Goan Christian woman from Ahmedabad. Gujarat.

In my view, he was a phenomenal psychiatrist with an amazing understanding both of the body and the mind. When we were not fighting ideological battles late into the evening, he laid out in crystal-clear terms the sources of my health and conduct on any given issue, personal or professional. He always had not just time but insight…he almost always hit the nail on the head.

I still remember vividly one evening four years ago when my mobile phone rang in the pub at the Delhi Golf Club. I was with friends and excused myself to walk out to the deck. It was Prakash. He told me he was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. I was benumbed. As I went back to our table, my friends saw there was something wrong. I told them.

Fast forward to January 6 this year: my mobile phone rang; it was my friend Satu, who the world knows as Sam Pitroda. I was at a friend’s place to dinner. I walked out of the room. Satu said two words: “Prakash died.” I said I’d call him back and collapsed into a paroxysm of grief and tears. It was not unexpected, of course but nevertheless it shattered my consciousness. Just as I did four years ago, I walked back in a zombie state.

How can a friendship disappear…just two phone calls?

Prakash, as I began, knew everything…the mind, the body, the spirit. Now he’s gone and all I have from him is a millionth of his knowledge, a micron of his wisdom. What I do have is some understanding of his compassion and his mighty humanity. Everyone should be so lucky…to know Prakash was to get to know yourself and the world.


Farewell, my philosopher king!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Beautiful. Thank you. Alice

Unknown said...

Rajiv: thanks for a lovely eulogy. Prakash will be sorely missed by all of us.
Kashi

Unknown said...

Prakash was family to you, elder brother, dear ... losing him must left big hole your heart. Peace.

Unknown said...

Very well said. He enriched all of us. Salil

Anonymous said...

I knew Prakash as a young Renaissance boy. But, your blog opened up a totally new Prakash. Years ago, we had a brief tet-a-tet at my Bombay residence over a small drink about his daughter having become a modern version of Mahabharat's Kunti begetting Karna, But, I dismissed it as his mere fantasy. But, your blog is sure an eye opener. No wonder, you and his young friends should miss him so much. May his soul rest in peace.
--- Hemendra A. Mehta.
23/i.2015.

Louise said...

learned a lot about Prakash from your marvelous post.. a fine tribute and i loved your honesty about your disagreements. i'd better go make a vodka martini and raise it in his honor! thank you!

Rajiv N Desai said...

last night, feb 18, we held a memorial dinner to celebrate prakash's 75th birthday. it was attended by all those in delhi who knew and loved him. ashis nandy spoke beautifully and his remarks were in the nature of what i posted on res gestae. the idea that disagreements must never come in the way of friendship is the lesson prakash taught us.

Ruth said...

Beautiful tribute to Prakash - gave us a lot of insight into his brilliant mind- a lot to cherish- we miss him so much-

Suresh said...

Pappi and I miss him terribly. We had witnessed his physical decline; his spirit always buoyant, though. He gave some of his choicest books to us for safe keeping, and peridically would come over to referrence those for some article he was penning. Tanvi, while anticipating such new, was heart-broken: "Prakshkaka was no mere mortal; how could he d...". She went to him for his guidance and tutelage when she was preparing a thesis on Eroticism in Hindu Lietrature; she could not have found a better educator and mentor.