Shine on you Crazy Diamond

Upamanyu's Aunt

Upamanyu was smart, funny, sensitive and loving. We had him as a gift in our lives for 28 years. And then, one day he was gone. My memories of Ops (as I called him) are pixelated, embedded in the photos on my laptop. He appears before me, young, smiling, healthy. He is real on the screen, but when I step away from my computer or put my phone down, I am acutely aware that he will no longer be physically present. Yet the kaleidoscopic memories of him as an infant, a teenager and a young adult who was still indulged as a child in his maternal grandparents’ home, remain crystalline, vivid, and elude erasure. The spirit of enquiry was a constant with Ops. I have yet to see a more curious child. As a pre- teenager who spent long summer and winter vacations in Kolkata, he would voraciously consume the contents of my books on Art with the same relish that he displayed for Tomato Rice and Chettinad Chicken. Entire afternoons were spent debating on why Van Gogh cut off his ear or why Monet had to paint haystacks so many times. Rifling through my stamp collection, he would be fascinated by stamps from erstwhile British colonies and memorise names of countries that no longer existed. His love for cricket meant dragging me to see a night-long match at Eden Gardens followed by pani puris at 2 A.M. on the promenade by the river. Ops had an irresistible sense of humour that included regaling us with loud readings from Bengali newspapers every morning in the presence of his horrified grandfather who tried valiantly to correct his accent! At the same time, his acute sensitivity displayed itself even as a 7 year old when he once burst into floods of tears on seeing a hungry child on a pavement. Ops’ love for animals was legendary: he was inseparable from my Golden Retriever, Leo, whom he groomed and then carried the tufts of golden fur carefully back to Delhi in an envelope as a keepsake till the next Kolkata holiday. When he and I went on a trip to Kasauli, he spent much of that holiday tending to a band of stray puppies that had entered the garden of the cottage we stayed in. There are numerous memories of Upamanyu that each of us have and cherish. He may have gone to a better place but we continue to love him while we learn to live without him. It is only fitting that The Upamanyu Mallik Initiatives (TUMI) will honour his love for cricket and dogs and acknowledge his deep concern for those with vulnerabilities and limited life chances.