Dilip, I really didn’t want to stand here and talk about you…because you didn’t believe in that… what you believed you practiced in life and showed us…. I was told to talk about Dilip and Nature… do I need to? If you knew Dilip, it is difficult to distinguish between the two. But to many who may not have had the lifetime opportunity to meet or interact with Dilip…or had the sight to see the “inconvenient truths” he told, this is what I thought of… I quote from the Memoirs of Pablo Neruda… which I wanted to read to Dilip and he would have enjoyed it ….

“Under the volcanoes, beside the snow-capped mountains, among the huge lakes, the fragrant, the silent, the tangled Chilean forest…. My feet sink down into the dead leaves, a fragile twig crackles, the giant rauli trees rise in all their bristling height, a bird from the cold jungle passes over, flaps its wings and stops in the sunless branches… and then, from the hideaway, it sings like an oboe…… The wild scents of the laurel, the dark scent of the boldo herb, enter my nostrils and flood my whole being….This is a vertical world: a nation of birds, a plentitude of leaves. ……the vegetable world keeps up its low rustle until a storm churns up all the music of the Earth.. he goes on narrating the enchanting Chilean forest thus and ends by saying…. Anyone who hasn’t been in the Chilean forest does not know this planet…..same is true about Dilip too…. He was like the big banyan tree which stands in the quadrangle in front of his office, where a whole lot of things happen…. Birds come and feed on the fruits, rest in the branches, converse in diverse languages about their philosophy of life…their hardships or just chatter about the simple things in life, monkeys come in the afternoons and sleep on its broad branches, or search for fruits, deer rest under the tree and feed on the fruits…. Everything is possible with that tree….To different people it gave different perspective and different solace. As someone on the blog said “he was our worry-tree”. We probably didn’t find time to see his sensitivities or needs. He was worried about the way we treat the Earth. He cared not to hurt anything that he came across and lived giving care all the time. Keeping aside his discomforts and ailments he traveled on buses, minimized his material needs and wished to see us living a life which is fewer burdens on Earth’s resources. He told us when we visited him “I am happy you came by bus”. That was Dilip.

Neruda said ……”Meanwhile, men are soaring into the solar system… Shoes track up the moon… Everything struggles to change, except the outworn systems…. These outworn systems were spawned in the immense spiderwebs of the Middle ages… spiderwebs stronger than the steel of machinery…. Yet there are people who believe in change, who have made changes, who have made the changes work, who have made changes burst into flower…… Nobody can hold Spring back!” Dilip was that spring, is that spring and will be that spring for many of us. He has transformed the lives of many and made them embrace a Fukuokan lifestyle which only few could dream of….there are many students and others like Siddarth, Chitra, Prashant etc…who have taken up an organic life style, living in remote villages of India doing organic farming and helping people who are in need abandoning the “luxuries” and “comforts” of the lifestyle and income they were used to, following Dilip. It is truly remarkable in this era, that someone who is not a religious leader or politician could mesmerize and change and transform lives…..like Dilip…

susy varughese at a condolence meeting for Dilip