Dilip. I knew him as well as one could know a self-effacing person who never talked of himself. Which is to say I did not know his inner self, but was well-acquainted with his principles, his good deeds, his kindness to all, and the extraordinary heroism with which he endured his blindness and the physical pain, which was his almost-constant companion.

Others have talked of his clear and intelligent mind, his excellence as a professor, his knowledge of carnatic music, his interest in cricket,and such other things. But the most important fact, the central one, is that he was a holy person. Where there is goodness of that order,there there is also sanctity in significant measure.

It is the fashion of the times to react with embarrassment to such words as holiness and saintliness, and some will say that Dilip was a rationalist and agnostic, and God did not figure in his speech. It matters not. The Presence was there, even if the mind hardly thought of it and the speech was not of it. One does not have to put on the garment of an ascetic and live apart, in meditation and prayer, to qualify as holy. Those are only unimportant externals. God IS, where extraordinary goodness dwells.

Not a day passes without him visiting the mind. The lines below formed themselves for him. Other verse too was written for him years ago, and was read to him at the time. This, I insert here, though Dilip was of a size that merited a poet, not just a stumbling versifier.


We'll never know, although on knowing bent,
So swiftly why a life so large was done;
To men of goodness, early ends if sent,
On earth can ever Virtue's wars be won?

We cannot know, but hope we surely can:
Ordained was all, towards a final good,
For which, too soon, we had to lose a man,
Who, all his days, for worth and measure stood.

But, since the life was one of suffering keen,
With tribulation too, of being blind,
How thoughtful more, if summoning had been
A fitter one, considerate and kind.

Oh son of light, now back in Primal Light,
For you, at least, departure hence, was gain:
No longer jailed are you, in sightless night,
No longer chained to unremitting pain.

Recalling all the things you did and said,
We'll strive a while to keep our living clean,
Then once again with vileness go to bed,
And end our tale as if you'd never been.

For, common folk, of height, will quickly tire,
Will always, soon, to being low, return,
Can never be, oh Dilip, lasting fire,
However much examples set, might burn.


It is taught that a man of goodness and beauty goes back into the Goodness and Beauty from which he came, and, with his death, nothing is gone but the physical lamp, in which the tongue of flame burned, during its brief existence away from the Primal Fire. There is no loss.

Nothing is lost: no beauty, no glory, that does not return to, and become once again part of the Bigger Entity, from which it separated during the brief period
of its earthly existence.

With such reflections one must still the sorrow. The rest is a matter of marshalling what courage and powers of endurance one can, and soldiering on.

M.A. Reddy