I do not know if the phrase friend, philosopher and guide applies more aptly to anyone than to Dilip Veeraraghavan, who passed away last Thursday.

I am a bit hazy as to precisely when I first came into contact with him but it was sometime in mid-1991 when some wing junta were taking the Indian National Movement course he was teaching. He was one of those rare profs who would hang out with students in hostels and even made us to address him by his first name. Before long, some of us were going to tarams with him, not for bun omelettes but as volunteers of Tamil Nadu Science Forum's arivoli iyakkam, a literacy movement that was to spread across most of TN. This was our first gentle introduction to social movements.

Over the years, we kept in touch via emails and during the ritual yearly visits to the homeland, never once failing to elicit an eppidi dA irukke, cackup as soon as he heard my voice. Students and friends would constantly drop in to his small office room packed with books and journals, which we would read to him. We soon discovered a common interest in carnatic music. Our conversations would be jump from Marxism (".. the problem with Marx is he did not take into account Nature into his philosophy..", he told me once), to Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution (he gifted me a copy in the mid-nineties which radically changed my worldview) and then to Sudha Ragunathan's bhava or lack thereof and the brahminisation of Carnatic music and onto Gandhi, on whom his views were a balanced middle-ground between deification and vilification.

More than anything else, he was a wonderful listener. He would patiently listen to opinions and philosophies of all colours and stripes and then gently respond, bringing to bear all his insight and wisdom. This way, he quietly influenced hundreds of IITM students and others who were fortunate to come into contact with him.

The last time I walked him was from Prof KRK's house to IISc along Sampige Road in Malleswaram in 2006. "Let us not take an auto, let us walk", he said, as usual and walk we did despite the lack of sidewalks and the noise. He was super thrilled with some vintage MD Ramanathan recordings i made for him.

While it is a sad occasion, we should also use this moment to reflect on all the things Dilip stood and lived for- simplicity, selflessness, social justice, ending oppression and a non-dogmatic, gentle and positive approach to life and try to cultivate some of these qualities in our own.

manoj saranathan