An officer and a gentleman

About a year ago, I said a long distance goodbye to a man who was with my father in school. He had become my father figure when I was alone and unhappy in Delhi and stayed a dear friend as life became brighter and easier. And he gave me his family, too, mainly his wonderful – and, as is the norm with most friends of mine – and delightfully mad wife, who is still and will always be a very special part of my life.

My first memory of meeting Gurbir, as the man was called, was when I was in India on a break from college. We were headed for Ladakh, the kingdom in the Himalayas, and wanted a little extra from the trip, which we were told that the army could help us with. So, since Gurbir had been – or perhaps still was, at the time – with the Indian army, he knew someone who could give us what we wanted. We met him and his family at his club, shared a happy lunch and lots of news and advice and then went in our different directions.

Many years later, I was alone and he was willing to be my more-or-less guardian. I spent many hours in his garden, playing with his dog, chatting with his wife, exchanging jokes, puns and information with him. Gurbir became the parent I was missing, in lieu of my own, but with a detachment and distance we both liked and respected. And we had fun together, going to polo matches, plays, dance performances, book readings, exhibitions and lunches and dinners, all with lots of laughter and warmth involved.

And then, like so many people in my life over the last year, he went away. Permanently. I had left Delhi some time before, and kept in only sporadic touch. But he was still that memory associated with love and lots of sunshine. He went at a time when I couldn’t mourn, when my own grief at losing my mother a few months before was too intense for anything else to add to its flavour, so it was a quickly camouflaged albeit disconcerting new hole in my psyche that was quietly and quickly locked away for me to think about later.

And later came a short while ago, when I was in Delhi for a brief holiday. A friend and I dropped in on his wife, still in the large old house set in its spacious garden. She was as affectionate and delightfully crazy as ever, her hug hard and warm as it had always been, her eyes sadder but still with that sparkle of wicked laughter and joie de vivre that was so specially hers. That evening, I finally mourned for my friend, watching a tiny flame flicker up in a small silver lamp, reading his last letter to his wife of so long, exchanging mutters with his multi-gene dog in the garden. As I cried, his dog licked my chin; as I battled with missing him, my friend held me; as I remembered all the time we had shared, his photograph smiled gently, fondly, at me.

Gurbir was, in every way, an officer and a true gentleman. And I wish he was still on this earth, just as he will always be part of my history.