The Great Indian Housing Society

 The Great Indian Housing Society: Where Cooperation Ends at the Parking Gate!

A few weeks ago, just before we left for Delhi, I came across an interesting little drama in our housing complex in Kolkata.

A lady living upstairs was looking distinctly agitated. Seeing her impatience, I asked her what had happened. She explained that her driver was unable to take their car out because another resident had parked his car in such a way that it was blocking her vehicle.

Our office staff had already gone to request the offending neighbour to move his car. So, the matter was being handled through the proper channels, as befits a respectable cooperative housing society.

But I could see that the lady was not particularly reassured.

In our society, car parking is not merely a practical problem. It is a running battle, an ongoing diplomatic crisis, and occasionally a matter of national importance. Sooner or later, almost every such dispute finds its way to the Secretary's table. I sometimes wonder whether the Secretary was elected to manage the affairs of the society or to spend his retirement settling disputes between people who can afford cars but cannot afford to accommodate each other!

The irony is that we all live in a cooperative housing society. The word cooperative suggests mutual consideration, adjustment and a willingness to accommodate one another. Unfortunately, these noble principles often disappear the moment somebody parks his car a few inches beyond the invisible boundary of his allotted space.

Perhaps cooperation is something we admire in theory but prefer to practise only when it does not inconvenience us.

 The problem of communication

I was reminded of Yuval Noah Harari's book Nexus. One of the reasons Homo sapiens became so successful, as Harari explains in his writings, is our remarkable ability to communicate and cooperate in large numbers. Unlike other animals, we can create shared stories, institutions and systems that enable millions of strangers to work together.

A splendid achievement, no doubt!

But I sometimes wonder whether Harari has ever attended a meeting of an Indian housing society.

We can discuss international relations, economic cooperation, climate change and even the future of artificial intelligence. Yet, when it comes to asking a neighbour to move his car by three feet, our celebrated ability to communicate seems to suffer a sudden technical failure.

The same person who can discuss global cooperation over a cup of tea may refuse to move his scooter so that somebody else's elderly mother can get into a car.

Clearly, the evolution of Homo sapiens has not yet reached the parking area.

 The Delhi chapter: A car, a platform and a fence

We also have a ground-floor flat in Pashchim Vihar, New Delhi. I do not own a car there, which has proved to be an unexpected blessing.

Our frontage is frequently occupied by the cars of neighbours. I have no particular objection. When the society was conceived in the late 1970s, car parking had not been given much thought. Most people travelled by scooter, and every flat had an attached scooter garage. Those were simpler times, when owning a car was not yet considered an essential qualification for respectable middle-class existence.

Unfortunately, urban India progressed faster than the original housing plans.

Cars became bigger, more numerous and considerably more expensive. The available parking space, however, remained stubbornly unchanged.

During one of our visits to Delhi, I discovered that a large car had been parked half on the raised platform in front of our flat and half on the road. It was a remarkable piece of parking engineering. The driver had managed to occupy two different levels without successfully belonging to either.

I came out and gave the driver a piece of my mind.

It turned out that the car belonged to the son of our next-door neighbour, a family with a reputation for picking fights. They were Multani Punjabis, and over the years I had learnt that an argument with them could become a much larger affair than the original issue warranted.

I am not particularly fond of unnecessary confrontations. At my age, I would much rather spend my energy reading a good book, writing a story or enjoying a leisurely walk than debating the finer points of somebody else's parking skills.

So I adopted a more permanent solution.

I put up sharp iron grills around the frontage and created a small garden inside.

There! Problem solved, at least on my side of the fence.

I could no longer complain about somebody parking on my platform, and the neighbours could no longer use it as an extension of their parking lot. The garden also gave me a little patch of greenery to look at, which was infinitely more pleasant than staring at somebody's car bumper.

In a cooperative society, sometimes the only way to preserve peace is to establish a boundary. Literally!

 The neighbour's garden and the dangerous water pipe

My upstairs neighbour in Delhi is a pleasant Sikh gentleman, Bhupinder, whom we affectionately call Bhupi. He and his wife have a son, Montu, who is married.

Montu happens to be fond of Bengali food, including non-vegetarian dishes. He is also a teetotaller, which means that at least one source of potential domestic controversy has been eliminated.

One does not need to offer whisky to every guest, after all. A plate of good fish curry can sometimes do the job.

Yesterday, Bhupi was telling me about another neighbour, the next door lady who waters the small garden in front of her house with a rubber pipe.

Now, watering a garden is ordinarily a peaceful activity. Plants need water, and somebody has to provide it. But in our housing complexes, even a garden hose can become a source of tension.

Bhupi sometimes has to reverse his car near the lady's garden. The lady, meanwhile, keeps a sharp eye on him to ensure that his car does not run over her precious rubber pipe.

Imagine the scene.

Bhupi is trying to reverse his car. The lady is monitoring the movement of the rear wheels. The rubber pipe lies across the ground like a high-security installation. One wrong move, and there may be damage to the pipe, an exchange of unpleasant words, and perhaps a complaint to the Secretary.

I can almost imagine a society circular being issued:

Residents are requested to exercise due care while reversing their vehicles in the vicinity of garden-watering equipment. Any damage to rubber pipes shall be viewed seriously.

Why not? We already have rules for parking, maintenance, noise and common areas. A separate set of regulations for rubber pipes may be the next logical step.

In India, no domestic problem is too small to become a matter of principle.

 When your flat grows beyond its boundaries

My  next brother Amu,youngest brother, Budu, and my nephew Ronnie, an IT engineer, live in the same Delhi complex. Amu recently told me about an even more ambitious form of cooperative living.

Four flat owners have expanded their flats horizontally and vertically until their homes have become more than twice the size of the original flats.

One can only admire their architectural enterprise, though perhaps not their understanding of building regulations.

A flat is supposed to have a defined area. But apparently, some residents regard the original plan as merely a suggestion, rather like the recommended serving size printed on a packet of snacks.

Why stop at the sanctioned area when there is a little space on either side? And if one can extend sideways, why not upwards?

A little construction here, a little extension there, and before long, a modest flat begins to resemble a private mansion assembled from several adjoining pieces of real estate.

Now the authorities have issued notices to these four owners for unauthorised construction.

One might have expected the matter to end there. The owners would have to explain themselves, comply with the regulations and accept the consequences.

But housing societies rarely allow a problem to remain confined to the people who created it.

The society now finds itself having to defend the matter, because several other owners occupying upper floors have also made extensions, perhaps to a lesser extent.

And there lies the real complication.

If the society takes a strict position against four residents, what happens when other residents have committed similar violations? Can the society object to one person's extension while overlooking another's? And how does one enforce rules fairly when the people responsible for enforcing them may themselves be surrounded by exceptions?

A cooperative society can suddenly discover that it has inherited a problem bigger than the original construction.

The lesson seems to be that if enough people break the same rule, enforcing it becomes a collective headache.

 Kolkata versus Delhi: Different problems, same human nature

Fortunately, our housing complex in Kolkata has so far spared us the drama of unauthorised architectural expansion. Our principal irritants are the familiar ones: car parking and the noise generated by renovation work inside individual flats.

Of course, the noise of renovation is understandable up to a point. People must repair their homes, replace old fittings and occasionally change the tiles in their bathrooms. Nobody can be expected to live forever with the same plumbing and flooring.

But the trouble begins when the neighbour's renovation becomes your personal sound-and-light show.

You may be reading a book, taking an afternoon nap or trying to have a conversation on the telephone. Suddenly, a drill starts operating on the other side of the wall with the enthusiasm of a machine designed to penetrate the earth's crust.

You begin to wonder whether your neighbour is merely renovating his bathroom or constructing a tunnel to China.

And, naturally, the work always seems to take longer than expected.

The owner says it will finish in a week. The contractor says ten days. The workers disappear for three days, return with a new machine and announce that some additional work has become necessary.

Meanwhile, the residents next door are expected to demonstrate patience, understanding and the spirit of cooperation.

In other words, your neighbour's home improvement becomes your personal endurance test.

 Every society has its own speciality

Looking at the two housing complexes, I have come to the conclusion that every society has its own peculiar brand of trouble.

In Kolkata, it is parking disputes and renovation noise.

In Delhi, it is parking disputes, garden pipes, unauthorised extensions and the occasional architectural revolution.

Elsewhere, I am sure there are residents fighting over lifts, pets, garbage disposal, the use of terraces, visitors' vehicles and the amount of money spent on Diwali decorations.

The details may differ, but the underlying problem is remarkably similar.

We want everyone else to respect our convenience, our property, our rights and our preferences. When it comes to respecting theirs, we become much less enthusiastic.

We want the common areas to remain clean, provided somebody else does the cleaning. We want the parking rules enforced, provided our own car is not inconvenienced. We want peace and quiet, except when our own flat is being renovated.

And we want the Secretary to solve every problem, preferably without issuing a notice to us.

Perhaps the Secretary deserves a special allowance for emotional wear and tear.

Is there really no solution?

I have often wondered whether these problems have any permanent solution.

Rules can certainly help. Clearly marked parking spaces, fair enforcement of building regulations, reasonable timings for renovation work and a willingness to discuss disagreements can prevent many disputes.

But rules alone cannot manufacture consideration.

A person may know perfectly well that his car is blocking somebody else's exit and still refuse to move it. Another may understand that an unauthorised extension affects the common structure but hope that nobody will object. A third may guard a rubber pipe more carefully than he guards the feelings of his neighbour.

The difficulty is not always a lack of information. Sometimes it is simply the unwillingness to accept a small inconvenience for someone else's benefit.

That, I suspect, is where the celebrated human ability to cooperate meets its real test.

It is easy to cooperate when everyone gets exactly what they want. The real test begins when one person has to give up a little of his convenience so that another person can live peacefully.

I am not suggesting that everyone should become a saint. That would be asking too much of human nature, particularly in a housing society.

But perhaps we could begin with a few modest principles: do not block another person's car, do not treat common property as an extension of your private kingdom, do not assume that building regulations apply only to other people, and do not turn every disagreement into a matter of personal honour.

Most importantly, remember that the neighbour you inconvenience today may be the very person you need tomorrow.

After all, we share more than a building. We share lifts, staircases, entrances, walls, pipes, parking spaces and, occasionally, the same Secretary.

My conclusion is that a cooperative housing society is a wonderful institution, provided one remembers that the word cooperative is not merely part of its name.

As for a permanent solution to all these problems, I am not particularly optimistic.

I have spent a lifetime working in engineering and management, tackling technical problems that could be analysed, measured and solved. But I have yet to discover an engineering formula for dealing with a neighbour who believes that his convenience is more important than everybody else's.

Perhaps such a formula does exist, but it has not yet been invented.

Until then, I shall continue to enjoy my little garden behind its iron fence, sympathise with Bhupi and his rubber-pipe adventures, and hope that the next time somebody blocks a car in Kolkata, the Secretary is not at lunch.

Because in our cooperative societies, the only thing more difficult than finding a parking space is finding a solution that everybody is willing to accept!

The boys of Kapalicarsi

The Boys of Kapalıçarşı

I was staying at Hotel Nuruosmaniye, a stone's throw from the Grand Bazaar. That morning I stepped out with my backpack, the call to prayer still hanging over the rooftops, and merged into the crowd on Nuruosmaniye Caddesi.

Near the bazaar gate, someone shoved me hard from the side. Then another, and another. A knot of local boys swirled around me, laughing, jostling, gone as fast as they came.

My hand flew to my jeans pocket. Empty. The money bag was gone.

"Hey!" I shouted.

The boys broke into a sprint, and I ran after them, my backpack thumping against my spine. They veered right into a narrow lane, Halıcılar Sokak, the street of the carpet sellers. Rolled kilims leaned against the walls like sleeping giants. I dodged a man carrying a tray of tea glasses, nearly sending them flying.

Then the lane closed in. Boys spilled out of shop doorways, from behind brass lamps and stacked rugs, blocking my path with elbows and shoulders. A cart rolled out in front of me. By the time I squeezed past, my targets had a ten-second lead.

I plunged through Kalpakçılar Caddesi, past windows blazing with gold, then cut down Yağlıkçılar Sokak, where scarves hung like banners. I caught a flash of a red cap and lost it in a sea of shoppers. On Mahmutpaşa Caddesi the crowd thickened and my lungs burned. I had lost them.

"Abi! This way!"

A small boy, maybe ten, tugged at my jacket. His shirt was too big, his grin missing a tooth.

"I am Hamid," he panted. "I saw them. I know where they go."

I followed. He slipped through gaps I didn't know existed, ducking under awnings, cutting through a courtyard where pigeons exploded into the air. We emerged near Tahtakale, the smell of cinnamon and roasted nuts rolling over us from the Spice Bazaar.

Hamid stopped at a tiny teashop with mismatched stools and pointed.

There they were, sprawled around a tin table, tulip glasses of tea in hand. The red cap lay beside my money bag.

I walked in slowly, heart hammering. The laughter died. I didn't shout. I picked up the bag and looked at each of them in turn. The gray-mustached owner growled something in Turkish, and the red-capped boy lowered his eyes.

I walked out without calling anyone. Outside, I crouched beside Hamid. "Why did you help me?"

He shrugged. "Istanbul is not only thieves, abi. Also tea."

**A strange idea**

That night I couldn't stop thinking about their faces. They weren't villains, just kids with quick hands and no one watching them. The next morning I found Hamid at the bazaar gate and made him an offer: introduce me properly.

He led me back to the teashop and there they were again, tense, ready to bolt. Hamid introduced them: **Emre**, the red-capped ringleader; **Kaan**, tall and quiet, who never stopped scanning the crowd; and **Burak**, round-faced and loud, who laughed at everything.

I didn't mention the bag. I ordered tea for all of them and sat down.

Emre studied me a long time. "You took your bag and left. No police. Why?"

"Because you're not criminals," I said. "You're guides who haven't had a customer yet."

Burak burst out laughing. Even Kaan smiled. Emre pushed a glass of tea toward me. "Okay, abi. We show you Istanbul."

That was the start of the best week of my life.

**Day 1: Hagia Sophia.** Emre led me through the crowds and made me stand under the great dome, head tilted back. "Fifteen hundred years," Burak whispered, for once not laughing.

**Day 2: The Basilica Cistern.** We descended into cool darkness, footsteps echoing between hundreds of columns while carp drifted below. Kaan showed me the Medusa heads, one sideways, one upside down. "Dan Brown came here," Hamid announced proudly. "Very famous."

**Day 3: Eminönü and Sirkeci.** We ate fish sandwiches on the boats by the Galata Bridge, then walked to Sirkeci station. Burak put on his most dramatic voice. "The Orient Express started here, abi! Murder, mystery!" The boys argued over who would play the detective.

**Day 4: The Grand Bazaar, again.** This time I walked the lanes as their guest. Shopkeepers who had blocked me days before waved and shouted greetings. Kaan led me to the corner where it had all begun. "Sorry," he said, without sounding sorry at all. Then Emre shouted "Skyfall!" and we ran the whole route again, laughing, a Bond chase with no villain.

**Day 5: The Bosphorus.** On the ferry, gulls wheeled overhead. Emre pointed to the Maiden's Tower, alone on its rock. "In a Bond film, a villain lives there. But the tea is better than any villain."

**Days 6 and 7: Everywhere else.** Rooftops, backstreets, hidden courtyards, simit shared on mosque steps. Every evening ended in the same teashop, where the owner brought my tea without asking.

**The farewell**

On my last night, the boys lined up in the teashop. Emre pressed something small and heavy into my palm: a brass key from one of the bazaar's old shops.

"For when you come back," he said, not meeting my eyes.

At dawn they all came to the airport, a place none of them had likely ever entered. Burak wasn't laughing. Kaan kept scanning the crowd, but I think he was hiding his face. Emre took off his red cap, held it a moment, then pushed it into my hands.

Hamid hugged me last, his arms barely reaching around my waist. "You will come back, abi?"

"I will," I said, and my voice cracked.

At the gate I turned. Four small figures stood in a row behind the glass, waving. Hamid's too-big shirt hung off one shoulder. I pressed the brass key to my chest and held up the red cap. They cheered, and I couldn't see them clearly anymore.

I had arrived in Istanbul as a victim of the city. I left as its friend, with a week I'd never get back, and a promise I intended to keep.

---

From Being Afraid of Dogs to Being Adopted by One!

From Being Afraid of Dogs to Being Adopted by One!

An unexpected journey from Delhi's street dogs to Furry, Hachiko, and a very possessive husky in Australia.

If you had told me in my childhood that one day I would be writing an affectionate piece about dogs, I would probably have laughed at you. Dogs and I had a perfectly straightforward relationship: they stayed on their side of the road, and I made sure I stayed on mine. Particularly if they happened to be street dogs in Delhi!

I was never particularly fond of dogs. In fact, I would rather avoid them than risk a close encounter. I had no objection to their existence, provided they maintained a respectable distance from me.

My youngest brother Budu ( chandan), however, once had a rather more intimate experience with one.

He was still at school and was returning home one day when a street dog decided to chase him. My brother came running into our flat, completely breathless and apparently speechless. He couldn't explain what had happened. He simply pointed towards the staircase.

And there was the culprit!

The dog had followed him right up to our first-floor flat. But instead of displaying any signs of aggression, it was standing there wagging its tail, looking perfectly pleased with itself.

I burst out laughing.

My poor brother had nearly lost his voice, while the dog appeared to have made a new friend. That day, I discovered that a dog's interpretation of a successful social encounter could be rather different from a human being's!

Little did I know that I would eventually become one of their greatest admirers.

### My first encounter with an Alsatian

After graduating from IIT Kharagpur, I joined Indian Oil Corporation at Gauhati Refinery in 1965. I was a young engineer, full of enthusiasm and technical knowledge, and ready to begin my professional career.

Unfortunately, the world outside the classroom contained certain hazards that no engineering textbook had prepared me for.

One of them was the Excise Commissioner, Mr G. D. Chatterjee, who owned a large and rather ferocious-looking Alsatian.

Mr Chatterjee had two daughters, Rupa and Shova. Occasionally, they would invite Gandhi, Marwah and me for dinner. The invitations were most welcome, of course. The only complication was that the route to the washbasin sometimes required us to pass within alarming proximity of the family dog.

I would approach that section of the house with the sort of caution normally associated with entering a dangerous industrial zone.

The girls would notice my discomfort and laugh.

“Don't worry! He's a nice boy!”

A nice boy!

I had encountered many strange descriptions in my life, but this was the first time I had heard a formidable Alsatian described as a boy.

Apparently, he was perfectly harmless. I was less convinced. After all, the girls knew him personally; I was merely an engineer who wanted to wash his hands and return to his dinner without becoming part of the menu.

Still, those encounters were my first small lessons in the possibility that dogs might be friendlier than they looked.

The decisive lesson, however, was yet to come.

### Enter Furry, the real boss of our household

Years later, when I was posted at NTPC Farakka, my wife Madhuri brought home a tiny Spitz puppy.

He was barely a month old and looked like a little ball of fur. There was really only one possible name for him.

Furry!

At that time, I had no idea that this little bundle of fluff would eventually take over our household with the authority of a chief executive who had acquired the company without consulting the existing management.

Furry did not merely become our pet. He adopted the three of us—Madhuri, our only son Anish, and me.

And once the adoption was complete, he made it abundantly clear who was in charge.

When I returned from work, he would often settle down beneath my chair. It was his favourite position, and I suspect he considered it an excellent location from which to supervise the head of the household.

The rest of the time, he would follow Madhuri around the house. Wherever she went, there he was, maintaining a discreet but continuous watch.

When she entered the kitchen, he would sit patiently at the kitchen door.

My late father, observing this arrangement, came up with a wonderful explanation.

Furry was supervising the cooking!

I could hardly disagree. In any well-run establishment, somebody has to monitor production, and apparently Madhuri's kitchen was no exception. Whether Furry was checking the quality of the ingredients or waiting for something to fall on the floor was a question best left to the auditors.

He had another favourite pastime. We would give him a play bone, which he would grip enthusiastically between his teeth. He would bite and chew it with such determination that one might have thought he was trying to extract some closely guarded industrial secret from it.

For a man who had once regarded dogs with considerable suspicion, I was now living with one who considered my chair his personal property and our kitchen his department.

Furry had accomplished what neither the Alsatian in Gauhati nor the street dogs of Delhi had managed to do.

He had made me comfortable in the company of dogs.

And then, in 2005, he left us.

It is remarkable how an animal that enters your life as a tiny ball of fur can leave behind such a large space when it is gone.

### A movie that brought it all back

Recently, I watched The Friend, starring Bill Murray and Naomi Watts, with a Great Dane named Apollo at the centre of the story. Apollo is played by a real dog named Bing.

In the film, Bill Murray's character is a writer who dies, leaving Apollo behind. Naomi Watts's character, who lives in a small New York apartment where dogs are not allowed, finds herself having to accommodate this enormous canine presence in her life.

It is not an arrangement either of them seems particularly enthusiastic about at first.

The dog is grieving the loss of his master, while Naomi's character is struggling with the practical and emotional complications of taking him in.

But gradually, something changes.

Apollo begins to occupy a place in her life that she had never intended to give him. The dog's grief, his quiet presence and his need for companionship begin to affect her in ways she cannot easily explain.

One scene particularly touched me. Whenever Naomi reads something written by Bill Murray's character, Apollo sits and listens. He seems almost to understand the words, as though the voice of his departed master has somehow returned to him through the pages.

Of course, we cannot know precisely what a dog understands in such circumstances. But we can recognise the comfort of a familiar voice, the power of memory and the extraordinary attachment that can develop between a human being and an animal.

Watching Apollo reminded me of Furry.

I began thinking about how dogs become part of our lives without asking permission, and how, before we realise it, we have become emotionally dependent on their presence.

Sometimes a film does that to you. You sit down intending to watch a story, and before long, you find yourself revisiting chapters of your own life.

Apollo had opened a door to Furry.

And Furry led me to another dog whose story has touched millions of people.

 Hachiko: the dog who never gave up waiting

The Japanese film Hachi: A Dog's Tale, based on the true story of Hachiko, is one of those films that can reduce even the most determinedly unemotional person to silence.

Hachiko was an Akita puppy adopted by Professor Hidesaburo Ueno of Tokyo. Every morning, the dog would accompany his master to Shibuya Station and wait for him to return from work.

It became a daily ritual. The professor would leave, and Hachiko would return to the station in the evening to welcome him home.

People began to notice this faithful little routine.

Then, in 1925, Professor Ueno died suddenly while at work. He never returned to the station.

But Hachiko did.

Every afternoon, around five o'clock, the dog would appear at Shibuya Station and wait for his master. The train would arrive, passengers would emerge, and people would disperse towards their homes.

And Hachiko would keep waiting.

Tomorrow, perhaps.

Or the day after.

Or surely the next day.

For nearly ten years, he continued to return to the station, waiting for a man who would never come home again. Hachiko died in 1935, after years of this extraordinary devotion.

A statue commemorates him outside Shibuya Station, where his story continues to attract visitors from all over the world.

What moves me most about Hachiko's story is that he was not making a philosophical statement about loyalty. He was not trying to teach humanity a lesson. He was simply doing what he had always done, guided by a bond he could not explain to us in words.

Perhaps that is what makes the story so powerful.

We humans have a remarkable ability to complicate love with expectations, arguments, disappointments and conditions. Hachiko's devotion seems to have had none of those complications.

His master had always returned.

So he waited.

And waited.

There is something almost unbearable about that simple faith.

### Our Labrador neighbour who moved into our drawing room

But you don't have to travel to Tokyo or watch a Hollywood film to discover the emotional world of dogs. Sometimes, the evidence is sitting right below your ceiling fan.

During one of our stays in Delhi, we had a neighbour who owned a large Labrador. We would occasionally give the dog biscuits, which he accepted with the enthusiasm of a man who had discovered an unexpectedly generous pension scheme.

Soon, he became very friendly with us.

In fact, he became so friendly that he began spending a considerable amount of time in our drawing room, comfortably stretched out beneath the fan.

One might have assumed that the dog had made an innocent mistake about the address of his residence.

But no. He had made a decision.

Our neighbour, unfortunately, did not treat him particularly well. Perhaps the Labrador found our home more welcoming, or perhaps he simply preferred our company. Whatever the reason, he began treating our flat as a second home.

Then came a family wedding.

My nephew was getting married, and a shamiana had been erected behind their flat in the same residential complex at Pashchim Vihar. The extended family gathered there for practically everything, from breakfast to dinner. In a Bengali family, a wedding is not merely a ceremony; it is a temporary institution providing employment to relatives, unlimited tea to visitors and food to anyone who happens to be within walking distance.

Our Labrador friend soon discovered this arrangement.

He would follow us to the shamiana and join the gathering as though he had received a formal invitation.

Nobody seemed to object. After all, he was a regular member of the extended household by then, even if his name was missing from the guest list.

When the time came for us to leave Delhi and return to Kolkata, we thought little of what would happen next.

Later, my brother told me that, for several days after our departure, the Labrador continued to visit our flat, apparently looking for us.

Just imagine that.

He had no way of knowing that we had moved away. Nobody had explained the relocation arrangements to him. There had been no farewell speech, no change-of-address card and certainly no WhatsApp message.

He simply came looking for the people who had been kind to him.

Eventually, his owner gave him away.

I have often wondered what became of that Labrador. Did he find another family? Did he discover another drawing room with a comfortable fan? Did he continue looking for familiar faces?

I will never know.

But I remember him, and I hope he found the affection he deserved.

### From Azlan and Silly to Akira in Australia

Our son Anish, who lives in Australia, has also had his share of canine companions.

At one stage, he had two large dogs, Azlan and Silly.

Azlan was a magnificent Rottweiler, majestic in appearance and impressive enough to make visitors reconsider their plans before entering the house.

Silly, on the other hand, was a cattle dog, and she was exceptionally clever.

I once tried hiding her rag doll in every conceivable place I could think of. I was determined to outwit her. I selected hiding places that, in my opinion, would have defeated any ordinary dog.

Silly found the doll every single time.

I began to suspect that I was not playing hide-and-seek with a dog at all, but conducting an intelligence test in which the examiner had already seen the question paper.

Then there is Akira, Anish's present companion, a beautiful Husky who came into the family as a puppy.

She has been with him for more than a decade now.

Whenever Madhuri and I visit Australia, Akira makes it abundantly clear that I am one of her favourite people.

I find this rather gratifying, particularly when I remember the young man who used to avoid street dogs in Delhi.

However, Akira has one weakness.

Jealousy!

If I spend too much time with my granddaughter Isha, Akira is not at all pleased. She wants my attention, and she is quite capable of making her feelings known.

Apparently, at my age, I have acquired a new set of domestic responsibilities. In Australia, I must divide my affection fairly between a granddaughter and a Husky, making sure that neither feels neglected.

Nobody had mentioned this in my retirement plan.

I had expected to spend my later years reading, writing, painting and playing golf. I had not anticipated having to manage canine jealousy across generations!

Still, if a dog wants your company after more than ten years, there are worse problems to have.

### The curious thing about dogs

Looking back, I find the transformation rather amusing.

The boy who was frightened of street dogs grew into a young engineer who cautiously navigated past an Alsatian. The engineer then became the reluctant householder who was adopted by a Spitz named Furry. Eventually, he became the grandfather who is adored by a Husky in Australia.

Somewhere along the way, my fear disappeared.

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when it happened. There was no dramatic incident, no sudden revelation, no bolt of lightning.

Perhaps it was simply Furry lying beneath my chair after a long day at work. Perhaps it was his patient vigil outside Madhuri's kitchen. Perhaps it was the way he followed us everywhere, quietly making himself indispensable.

Or perhaps it was the gradual realisation that a dog does not need to speak your language to understand that you have returned home, that you are feeling low, or that you could do with a little company.

Dogs do not read our books, although Apollo seemed particularly interested in his master's writing. They do not understand our professional designations, our engineering qualifications or the importance we attach to our achievements.

Furry certainly did not care whether I had successfully completed a complicated project at Farakka. As far as he was concerned, my most important achievement of the day was coming home and occupying my chair so that he could settle beneath it.

That was his idea of a successful evening.

And perhaps he had a point.

We spend much of our lives trying to establish our importance in the world. We acquire qualifications, pursue careers, shoulder responsibilities and worry about what the future holds. We become accustomed to being needed for what we can do.

A dog, however, seems to be interested in something much simpler.

It wants to be with you.

Not because you are an IIT graduate, a senior executive, a successful author or a retired engineer. Not because you can solve its problems or offer it wise advice.

It wants you because you are you.

And when you are away, it may wait for you. When you return, it may follow you from room to room. When you sit down, it may lie beneath your chair. And when you spend too much time with somebody else, it may become thoroughly jealous.

There is no management textbook that quite captures this kind of relationship.

Though, come to think of it, I could probably write a chapter about Furry and Akira for my next book on management!

### From fear to affection

Furry left us in 2005, but he changed something in me permanently.

I am no longer afraid of dogs.

That does not mean I have become foolish enough to approach every unfamiliar dog and start patting its head. A little common sense is always advisable, particularly when dealing with an animal whose history and temperament you do not know.

But the old instinct to avoid dogs simply because they were dogs has disappeared.

I now think of them differently.

I think of Furry, the little ball of fur who became the boss of our household. I think of Hachiko waiting patiently at Shibuya Station. I think of Apollo listening to the words of a dead writer. I think of Silly finding her rag doll, Azlan standing majestically in Australia, Akira demanding my attention, and the nameless Labrador who continued to look for us after we had left Delhi.

Each of them has a different story. Yet, in each story, there is something recognisable: attachment, trust, companionship and the need to belong.

Perhaps that is why The Friend touched me so deeply. It reminded me that the relationship between a human being and a dog is not simply about ownership. Sometimes, we believe we have brought an animal into our home, when in reality the animal has quietly entered our lives and rearranged the furniture of our hearts.

Furry certainly did that to us.

And if you ask me who adopted whom in Farakka, I would say, without the slightest hesitation, that Furry adopted three human beings and spent the rest of his life training us to behave properly.

We were reasonably obedient pupils.

Though I suspect Madhuri was his favourite student, and I was merely the man who provided the chair!

The Lansdowne Detour:

The Lansdowne Detour: A Morning, a Mystery, and a Very Confused Gentleman

I stepped out of the lake area, still catching my breath from the morning walk, and headed towards my SUV. That’s when I noticed Gopal, my driver, looking more agitated than a cat at a dog show. Inside the vehicle sat a gentleman in his sixties—T-shirt, jeans, walking shoes—looking as though he owned the car, the road, and possibly the neighbourhood.

He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him. But the moment our eyes met, he gestured grandly, as if to say, “Come, sit. This is our car.” Now, in Kolkata, refusing such an invitation is like refusing phuchka from a street vendor—rude and potentially dangerous. So, I played along.

“Where shall I drop you?” he asked, turning to Gopal and calling him “Paltu.” Gopal shot me a look that said, “Boss, I swear I’ve never seen this man before.”

It didn’t take a detective to figure it out. The gentleman had Alzheimer’s. No short-term memory, just a mind stuck somewhere in the past, flipping through old photographs while the present blurred into watercolour.

“Where are you heading?” I asked casually.

He smiled. “Lansdowne. My house.”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’m going that way too.” Then, to Gopal: “Paltu, take us to our house.” I winked. Gopal, bless him, started the SUV without another word.

Jalebi, Jagannath, and the Time-Traveling Shopkeeper

On the way, past Gariahat, I watched the gentleman. He was looking out the window like a child discovering Kolkata for the first time—every shop, every tree, every stray dog a new wonder.

When we neared Lansdowne market, he suddenly pointed. “Stop! I want jalebi for breakfast.”

We pulled up outside an old sweet shop that looked like it had survived the British, the Raj, and at least three municipal elections. The shopkeeper, an elderly man named Jagannath, rose from his stool and approached with a smile that faltered when the gentleman didn’t recognise him.

“I’m Jagannath,” he said, gently.

The gentleman squinted. “But… how did you become so old in just a few days?”

Jagannath’s smile froze. He looked at me, helpless. I took him aside and explained: this man remembers the past vividly, but the present slips through his fingers like sand.

“Do you know where he lives?” I asked.

Jagannath nodded. “He was very rich. First wife died, left a two-year-old son. He remarried—a poor woman, Lata. She raised the boy well. The son went abroad for studies. After that… I don’t know. But I know the old house.”

The House That Wasn’t There Anymore

We drove on, Jagannath accompanying us. Soon, we reached a spot where an old house was being demolished—walls half-gone, debris everywhere, the skeleton of a home being erased.

The gentleman got down and rushed towards the demolition squad, shouting, “Who gave you permission to destroy my house?”

I approached the supervisor. “What’s going on here?”

He handed me a mobile number. “Call the real-estate agent.”

I did. The agent’s voice was smooth, practiced. “The property now belongs to Sonappu. Notorious builder near Ballygunge station. You may have heard of him.”

Oh, I had. Sonappu—alias Biswajit Poddar—was the kind of name that made South Kolkata residents clench their fists. Along with DCP Santanu Sinha Biswas, he’d built a racket targeting senior citizens, forcing them to sell land below market rate, forging documents, and using police muscle to evict those who resisted.

 Lata’s Tears and a Son in America

Just then, an old lady came running from a nearby tea shop, crying. It was Lata, the second wife.

“They took our house,” she said, voice trembling. “Sonappu and DCP Sinha—they forged my husband’s signature when they found out about his disease. Our son came from the US to challenge them, but TMC goons threatened him. He accepted 20 lakhs, gave it to us to buy a flat. Now he sends monthly allowance.”

She looked at her husband, who was still staring at the rubble, confused. “He doesn’t remember any of this. But I do.”

I’ve read about these evictions in the newspapers—elderly couples, widows, retired teachers, all pushed out by the notorious duo during the TMC regime.  Now, both Sonappu and DCP Sinha are behind bars, but for many, justice came too late.

Jagdish’s Morning Adventure

Later, over tea, Jagdish—my friend who’d witnessed the whole thing—recounted the morning’s adventure.

“You should’ve seen him,” he said, laughing. “One minute he’s ordering jalebi like it’s 1985, the next he’s confronting a demolition squad like he’s in a Satyajit Ray film.”

We started planning our next move. I noted down Lata’s address, promising to inform the Chief Minister’s office. The Suvendu Adhikari government has been cracking down on corruption, with multiple police and central agency actions against land-grabbing networks.  Maybe, just maybe, this family could get their home back.

 A Playful Postscript

As I left, I thought about the irony. In a city where memory is both a curse and a blessing, this gentleman had forgotten everything—except the one thing that mattered: home. And in a twist no writer could invent, the villains of our story were already in jail, their empire crumbling faster than the house they’d destroyed.

Sometimes, justice is slow. Sometimes, it’s served with jalebi.

Note: The story is based on real status during TMC misrule in Bengal!

The Janissary's Paradox: A chatroom

The Janissary’s Paradox: A Chatroom, a Book and Too Many Lost Souls

I often drop into a chatroom called “Sherlock and You”, a place where people from all corners of the globe gather, ostensibly to discuss literature. Of course, literature is only the excuse. The real attraction is discovering how many different ways human beings can misunderstand the same book.

My chosen group is mostly interested in modern literature. Recently, I was reading The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak when I came across an intriguing expression: “Janissary’s Paradox.”

Naturally, I did what any innocent reader would do—I mentioned it in the chatroom.

That was my first mistake.

Within minutes, I was attacked by a barrage of questions, explanations, personal histories, childhood memories and, occasionally, complaints about European weather.

The Janissaries, I explained, were the elite soldiers of the Ottoman Empire. Many were taken as Christian boys, converted, trained and transformed into the Sultan's most loyal soldiers. There was something deeply paradoxical about the arrangement: the empire took children from their original communities, erased much of their inherited identity, gave them a new identity—and then depended on them to defend the very system that had transformed them.

The more I explained, the more I realised that this was not merely an Ottoman historical curiosity.

It was happening all around me.

Helen the Lost, who introduced herself as being from Paris, was the first to arrive.

“I am from Congo,” she announced. “But in France I had to learn French, behave French, think French. Slowly I began wondering—where did the Congolese Helen disappear?”

Then came an Arab gentleman living in Germany.

“I can manage German bureaucracy,” he declared, “but I cannot manage German winter.”

That apparently was his own version of the Janissary Paradox.

Then Bloefeld appeared—the notorious Bond villain, at least according to his chosen identity. He maintained that he had no identity problem whatsoever.

“I have several identities,” he said. “That is much more efficient.”

Lothar from Romania disagreed. He called himself “Lost in the Wild.” He had lived in three countries, spoken four languages and was still trying to decide which country had the correct version of himself.

Lotus from Arizona was even more complicated. She said she had migrated so long ago that she could no longer remember whether she was nostalgic for the country she had left or for the person she had been when she left it.

The Unmindful Philosopher from Dubai then entered the conversation.

“Identity,” he announced, “is merely an attachment of the ego.”

We waited.

After five minutes he added:

“Except when my passport expires.”

That brought the discussion firmly back to earth.

From Istanbul to America—and then to the chatroom

In Shafak's novel, the paradox is particularly poignant in the context of Armenians in America: people carrying the memory of a homeland, sometimes inherited through generations, while simultaneously becoming part of a completely different society.

And suddenly our little literary discussion had become an unofficial conference on the global diaspora.

People who had crossed borders for opportunity, safety, marriage, education, war, economics or simply curiosity began telling their stories.

Some had become completely assimilated.

Some fiercely preserved their old identity.

Some lived somewhere in between—a cultural no-man's-land where the food remained authentic, the language became rusty and the grandchildren answered in English.

And then there were those who had developed a fascinating third identity.

They were no longer entirely from there, but they were never completely from here either.

That, I began to understand, is perhaps the real Janissary's Paradox.

The first generation says, “We must not forget where we came from.”

The second generation says, “Why should I be different from everyone else?”

The third generation suddenly asks, “What exactly did my grandparents lose?”

And somewhere between generations, identity becomes a family heirloom nobody knows how to use.

The diaspora paradox

The modern world has produced millions of Janissaries—not literally, of course, but psychologically.

Migration often requires adaptation. You learn the language, change your habits, understand the local customs, acquire a new passport and gradually learn how to laugh at jokes you didn't understand ten years ago.

But adaptation has a price.

At what point does adaptation become erasure?

And at what point does preserving one's original identity become a refusal to belong?

That was the question our chatroom could not settle.

The Pakistani in London complained that his children knew more about Premier League football than cricket.

The Bengali in New York complained that his daughter spoke Bengali only when she wanted money.

The Indian in Toronto complained about snow.

The Indian in California complained about taxes.

The Frenchman complained about Americans.

The Americans complained about the French.

At this point Sherlock himself might have closed the chatroom.

Yet beneath all the humour was something rather serious.

The diaspora is not simply a geographical phenomenon. It is an internal negotiation.

You carry one culture in your memory and acquire another through everyday life. You may speak one language at home and another outside. You may eat the food of your childhood while listening to music from your adopted country. You may celebrate festivals whose original meaning has become blurred but whose emotional significance has increased.

And sometimes you discover that the homeland you are defending exists mainly in your imagination.

The final irony

By midnight, the chatroom had become unusually quiet.

Helen the Lost was still there.

So was Bloefeld.

Lothar had disappeared into the wild.

Lotus was probably somewhere in Arizona wondering who she really was.

The Unmindful Philosopher had gone offline after declaring that identity was an illusion.

I closed The Bastard of Istanbul and thought about the Janissaries.

Perhaps the greatest paradox is not that people can lose their original identity.

It is that after losing it, they may spend the rest of their lives desperately trying to reconstruct it.

And perhaps that is why a simple phrase in a Turkish novel produced such an extraordinary reaction in a chatroom full of strangers.

I had thought I was discussing history.

They thought I was discussing them.

And somewhere between Istanbul, Paris, Congo, Germany, Romania, Arizona and Dubai, I realised that the Janissary's Paradox was no longer an Ottoman story.

It had become a global one.

Two Reds,Two Roads

Two Reds, Two Roads: How Kerala and Bengal Found Their Way to Communism

I have been reading Shashi Tharoor’s India: From Midnight to Millennium, and one passage suddenly made me stop and think.

Tharoor recalls his childhood at his maternal home in a village deep in Kerala. He was born into an upper-caste family and, as a child, discovered a rather strange village rule: he simply could not play with children belonging to lower castes.

Now imagine being a child and being told:

“You can play with him—but not with him.”

Naturally, the child asks, “Why?”

And the answer is, “Because he belongs to that caste.”

The child might reasonably ask the next question: “What is a caste?”

That, I suspect, was the beginning of many Indians' lifelong education in the subject!

What struck me was that I could not remember anything quite like that from my own childhood visits to remote villages in Bengal. I certainly knew that caste existed, but I don't remember those invisible walls, prescribed distances or the sense that one human being had to physically keep away from another because of birth.

That difference stayed in my head.

Both Kerala and Bengal became great strongholds of communism. Both produced powerful Communist movements and long periods of Left political rule. Yet the social worlds from which their communism emerged were remarkably different.

So I started digging around—with a little help from AI research, which nowadays is always ready to join an old man's argument—and discovered that the two stories are almost mirror images.

Same red flag. Different road to the red flag.

---

Kerala: When Caste and Class Sat Down Together

Pre-independence Kerala had one of the most rigid caste systems in India.

And this was not merely the familiar Indian arrangement of “You sit there, I'll sit here.”

Kerala had something much more elaborate.

Swami Vivekananda, travelling through Kerala in the 1890s, was so struck by the extraordinary rigidity of the caste system that he famously described the region as a “lunatic asylum” of caste.

It was a deliberately shocking expression, but he was reacting to a society where caste governed not merely marriage, occupation and social status, but even everyday physical movement and human contact.

Distance itself could become a caste rule.

A Pulaya, for example, was traditionally required to remain at a considerable physical distance from a Namboodiri Brahmin. The often-cited figure is 72 steps.

Seventy-two steps!

Today, if somebody tells me to maintain a distance of 72 steps, I assume either he is very angry with me or he has discovered a new Covid variant.

But in traditional Kerala, this was part of the social order.

Lower-caste people could be prevented from entering temples, using certain roads or observing ordinary social customs that upper castes took for granted. In some communities, even covering the upper body was restricted.

And here the story becomes important.

The social hierarchy was closely connected with the ownership and control of land.

The jenmi system gave enormous power to large landholders, particularly Namboodiri Brahmins, with Nairs and other groups also occupying important positions in the landholding structure. Below them were tenants and agricultural labourers, including Ezhavas, Thiyyas, Pulayas, Cherumas and others.

So if you were born at the wrong end of the social ladder, life could deliver a double punch.

You were poor.

And you were considered socially inferior.

The person who owned the land could also belong to the social group that considered you untouchable.

That is a rather combustible combination.

And perhaps this is what makes Tharoor's childhood recollection so striking. He was not describing some dusty historical chapter from a school textbook. He was remembering, as a child, being told that certain children were simply not his playmates because of caste.

A child naturally asks:

“But why?”

And society answers:

“Because that is the way things are.”

Which is precisely when society should become nervous.

Because sooner or later somebody is going to ask:

“But who decided that?”

---

Then Came the Social Reformers

Kerala did not suddenly wake up one morning and discover Karl Marx hiding behind a coconut tree.

The groundwork had already been laid by powerful social reformers.

Sree Narayana Guru challenged caste hierarchy and preached the dignity and equality of human beings. Ayyankali organised among oppressed agricultural communities and fought for education and social rights. Chattampi Swamikal questioned the intellectual foundations of Brahminical dominance.

So before Kerala became politically red, it had already begun questioning why society was arranged in such a peculiar fashion.

Then came the Communists.

Leaders such as P. Krishna Pillai, A. K. Gopalan and E. M. S. Namboodiripad found a society in which grievances were already deep, organised and increasingly political.

The Communist movement did not have to manufacture the anger.

The raw material was already lying around in abundance.

The Kayyur uprising of 1940, the Punnapra–Vayalar uprising of 1946 and the numerous agrarian struggles in Malabar reflected an explosive mixture of land, tenancy, caste and political mobilisation.

And this is where Kerala's story becomes distinctive.

Communism could present itself not merely as an economic argument about wages and land.

It could also be understood by many of its supporters as the next stage of a much older struggle for dignity.

The red flag arrived at a door where people had already been asking why the door was closed in the first place.

---

And Then I Come to Bengal

Now Bengal.

Here the story becomes rather different.

When I think of my own childhood visits to villages in Bengal, I certainly cannot claim that caste did not exist. Of course it did. Bengal had—and has—its own complicated caste hierarchy and discrimination.

But the atmosphere was different.

I don't remember that strange Kerala-style combination where caste identity and control over land appeared to sit on the same chair.

And there is a historical reason.

The Permanent Settlement of 1793 transformed Bengal's landholding structure. Zamindari rights became transferable and could effectively be bought and sold. Estates changed hands, sometimes quite dramatically.

As a result, Bengal's zamindars did not belong to one single caste.

There were Kayastha zamindars, Sadgop, Mahishya, Aguri and other Hindu landholders, Muslim landowners and merchant families who accumulated estates.

So the Bengali Brahmin was not automatically the great village landlord sitting on top of everybody else.

Quite often he was doing something much less glamorous.

He was the village tolpandit trying to keep a Sanskrit school alive.

Or the impoverished pujari waiting for his next handful of rice.

Or the schoolmaster who seemed to have been permanently appointed to poverty.

Sarat Chandra's world is full of such people.

So is Bibhutibhushan's.

The Bengali Brahmin could quite easily be poor.

Sometimes, I suspect, the poor Brahmin and the poor peasant had more in common economically than either would have liked to admit.

---

The Bengali Village Had Another Villain

If Kerala had its jenmi, Bengal had the jotedar.

The jotedar was often a substantial local cultivator or landholder. He could own considerable acreage, lend grain or money, and have land cultivated by bargadars, the sharecroppers.

And the interesting thing was that the jotedar did not have to belong to one particular caste.

He could be Muslim in Murshidabad.

Rajbanshi in North Bengal.

Mahishya in Midnapore.

Or belong to another local community altogether.

So the conflict increasingly became one of who owned the land and who worked it, rather than simply which caste you were born into.

That distinction matters.

The Bengali Communist movement therefore found an enormous political opening in the economic relationship between landlord, jotedar and sharecropper.

And then came Tebhaga.

---

Tebhaga: Two-Thirds, Please

In 1946–47, Bengal's sharecroppers demanded two-thirds of the crop instead of the traditional half.

The argument was wonderfully simple.

“If I am doing the cultivating, why shouldn't I get a larger share?”

It was not exactly a doctoral thesis in political philosophy.

It was the farmer looking at the harvested paddy and saying, essentially:

“Brother, let us discuss the arithmetic.”

The Tebhaga movement became one of the great agrarian struggles of Bengal, and Communist organisers played a major role in it.

Here the central question was not primarily whether one man could walk on a particular road because of his caste.

It was:

Who gets the crop?

And behind that:

Who owns the land?

---

Then History Threw Partition at Bengal

Just when Bengal was already dealing with enormous political and economic tensions, Partition arrived in 1947.

Millions of people were displaced from East Pakistan.

Many arrived in West Bengal with practically nothing.

If you have ever seen Sealdah station at a busy hour, imagine it with an entire population arriving without a house to go to.

Refugee colonies sprang up around places such as Jadavpur, Dum Dum, Sodepur and Howrah.

People occupied land.

They built huts.

They formed colony committees.

They demanded rehabilitation.

They searched for employment.

And gradually many entered the industrial workforce, including the jute mills and other factories.

Here again the Communist movement found fertile ground.

The party organised among refugees, workers and the urban poor. It became involved in the food movements of 1959 and 1966 and built powerful trade-union networks.

So Bengal's Left politics acquired another powerful memory.

Not the forbidden temple road.

Not the 72-step distance.

But the refugee train.

The crowded platform.

The squatter colony.

The struggle to find a piece of land and a way of earning a living.

---

Two Reds, Two Memories

And suddenly the difference I had noticed between Tharoor's Kerala childhood and my own Bengal memories began to make sense.

Kerala's journey to communism was deeply connected with a society where caste humiliation and economic exploitation could reinforce each other.

Bengal's journey was more strongly shaped by land relations, sharecropping, economic inequality, industrial labour and the enormous disruption of Partition.

Of course, neither story is completely pure.

Kerala had class conflicts that were not reducible to caste.

Bengal had caste discrimination that cannot simply be wished away.

And Bengal's Communist movement was certainly not only a refugee movement, just as Kerala's communism was not merely an anti-caste movement.

History is rarely polite enough to stay inside our neat little boxes.

But the difference in emphasis is important.

In Kerala, the memory of oppression could be something as intimate as being told:

“You cannot play with that child.”

In Bengal, the political memory could just as easily be:

“You have cultivated this land. Why are you getting only half the crop?”

Or, after Partition:

“We have arrived. Now where are we going to live?”

Same red flag.

Different childhood memories.

Different grievances.

Different roads.

And perhaps that is why two states that eventually became among India's strongest centres of Communist politics could nevertheless have such different social histories underneath that red colour.

In Kerala, the road to the red flag passed through the temple road that some were not allowed to walk on.

In Bengal, it passed through the paddy field, the jotedar's ledger, the sharecropper's demand—and eventually Sealdah station crowded with refugees who had lost almost everything.

In the end, both stories return to one deceptively simple question:

Who owns the land, who works it, and who gets to belong there?

Perhaps Marx would have approved.

And the Bengali grandmother, looking at the harvest, would probably have approved even more—provided somebody remembered to bring the fish curry to the table.

From the skies over Kalaikunda in ’65 to a Christmas table in Australia decades later — remembering Flight Lieutenant Alfred Tyrone Cooke, VrC. A true Bull who flew with nerve, humour, and heart. Rest easy, Sir.

Back in 1965, freshly minted out of IIT Kharagpur and still smelling faintly of lecture halls and late-night chai, I rocked up at Indian Oil’s Gauhati Refinery as a shiny new Engineer Trainee. Full of diagrams, differential equations and the quiet confidence of someone who had never yet met a real crisis. Naturally the universe decided that was the perfect moment to start a war right across the border in what was then East Pakistan.

My carefully prepared job description lasted about five minutes. One day I was poring over process flow sheets; the next I was a civil-defence volunteer, scrambling around with sandbags and wondering whether the emergency siren meant “take cover” or “lunch is ready.”

It properly kicked off on 6 August. We looked up and there they were — Pakistan Air Force fighters swooping low over the refinery like they owned the place. Luckily the army had thoughtfully parked a couple of anti-aircraft guns on the nearby hillocks. Those guns barked once, barked twice, and the uninvited guests remembered they had urgent business elsewhere. We all pretended we hadn’t been holding our breath.

By September the whole thing had turned into a full-scale drama. My junior friend Raghunathan, still stuck at IIT Kharagpur, later swore that he and the hostel boys had front-row seats to actual dogfights. Indian and Pakistani jets were buzzing past so low they were practically at eye-level with the third-floor balcony. Engineering lectures never stood a chance against that sort of entertainment.

Fast-forward a few decades and the circle closed in the most unexpected place: a Christmas lunch at Keith and Maureen Mitchell’s house in Australia. About ten years ago now. Keith, bless him, had rounded up a few Anglo-Indian expats for the usual festive feast. Among them sat a quiet, unassuming chap introduced simply as Alfred Cook. Only later did the full name drop: Flight Lieutenant Alfred Tyrone Cooke, VrC — the same man who had been dancing with Sabres over Kalaikunda while Raghunathan and the IIT boys were watching from the rooftops.

There we were — me (Roy), Keith (ex-RAF, so of course he had opinions about everything with wings), my son Anish, and Alfred himself — around the table while the turkey cooled and the crackers waited. Alfred started talking about 7 September 1965 as if it had happened last Tuesday. No. 14 Squadron, “The Bulls.” Hawker Hunter. Combat air patrol. Then suddenly four (or was it six?) PAF F-86 Sabres were all over Kalaikunda airfield and the sky turned into a low-level free-for-all that the IIT students later described like a cricket match they could actually see.

Anish, wide-eyed, leaned forward: “Uncle, you were only twenty-six. What on earth was going through your head?”

Alfred gave that half-smile of his. “Honestly? Mostly ‘Don’t let the wingtip hit the trees.’ We were so low I could practically read the name painted on the other chap’s helmet. Sabres turn tighter, Hunters go faster — so you use what you’ve got. One moment you’re chasing, the next someone’s on your tail, and your own anti-aircraft guns are cheerfully shooting at everyone including you. You don’t really think about being twenty-six and full of energy for the nation. You just fly the aeroplane and try not to become a permanent part of the landscape.”

Keith, never one to miss a technical opening, jumped in: “Those 30-mil Aden guns — rate of fire, ammunition load, how long before you were dry?”

Alfred chuckled. “Long enough to put one Sabre into the ground — Flying Officer Afzal Khan, I later learned — and mess up another so badly that Flight Lieutenant Tariq Habeeb just about staggered back to Tezgaon and wrote the thing off. Then the third one… well, the gun stopped answering. So I stayed on his tail anyway, waving the empty aeroplane at him until he decided East Pakistan looked safer. Ten minutes that felt like a lifetime. And I’d started the day on an empty stomach because the breakfast van had come and gone without leaving me so much as a biscuit.”

We all laughed, even though none of it was funny at the time. Anish kept asking about the adrenaline, the fear, the sheer cheek of it. Keith kept asking about energy management and deflection shooting. I just sat there thinking: this is the same sky Raghunathan watched from a hostel roof, and the same man is now politely refusing a second helping of pudding while describing how he once ran out of bullets and kept fighting with pure attitude.

Alfred later gifted that Vir Chakra back to his squadron in 2015. “It belongs to the Bulls,” he said. Classic him.

So it was with a genuinely heavy heart that I heard from Keith the other day: Flight Lieutenant Alfred Tyrone Cooke passed away on 18 September 2026 at Base Hospital, New Delhi, aged 87. The Indian Air Force paid its respects the same day. One of their finest.

From watching those first jets buzz over Gauhati as a wide-eyed trainee, to sitting at Keith and Maureen’s table ten years ago listening to the man who owned those very skies describe the dogfight while we passed the cranberry sauce — life does have a way of delivering history right to your doorstep, usually with a side of Christmas pudding.

Rest easy, Flt Lt Cooke. You flew the aeroplane. And you made the rest of us look up.