Goodbye dearest Rathikant Badu

 Over last weekend I learnt of the passing of one of my dearest friends from our college days, Rathikant Basu.

I will later share a link with you about his professional achievements, revolutionising Indian tv and entertainment in India, written by a former colleague, but first I must tell you about our personal association from our college days.

Sujit Bhattacharaya, son of a former  Chairman of the Reserve Bank of India, studied in Cathedral and John Connon School, Bombay, with me and we both joined St. Stephen’s College in the summer of 1960.

As fate eould have it, we were both in the only Mukarji block of that time. 

Photo of Collrge Mukarji Block

ujit, being a Bengali, quickly caught up with two other Bengalis, Dipankar Basu and  Rathikant Basu, both one year senior to us. 

Sujit is a quiet person with an absolutely great sense of wit and humour. 

We both made some friends independently and they all became our common friends. 

Sujit had earlier studied in Delhi at St. Columbus School, so he knew Rajagopalan Narayanan, who also stayed in Mukarji block, so he joined our crowd. As Rajagopalan  was a Malayali, he found me to be a good friend and sort of hero worshipped me.

Rathikant was of the same mould as Sujit with a great analytical mind, a sarcastic tongue used very carefully and cautiously and was real fun to be with. Commonly known ads Stephanian humour! 

Our other friends were my dearest, late Ajay Verma, Ambassador HE Niranjan Desai, Arun Aggarwal (Tich), Chandu Rijhwani, Devendra Pratap, Ravi Batra, Badrinath, Deepak Chopra, Hirak Ghosh and a few others.

Although Rathikant was not a resident of Mukarji block, as were the others, he literally lived there, going to the cafe or to the dining hall together and hanging out in the JCR.

We had a great time in college. We used to jump gates and go to the movies together.  We shared 7 people in a taxi coming back. 

None of us were the womanising type so we did not hang out in the Wenger cafe but preferred the India Coffee House and the Kamala Nagar restaurants for our out of college jaunts.

The crowd was a cross-section of persons from all parts of India, highly secular, and from a variety of courses as Physics, Maths, Chemistry, Economics and English and covered the years  from 1st to final. All were studious and did spend time clearing our grades.

We loved hanging out together and we had varied sports interests from basketball, hockey, cricket, table tennis, chess, bridge, carroms, and midnight feasts!

Those were golden days and this crowd, along with my cousin Padma Shri Mammen Mathew (Rajen) and his crowd in the first year when I was in my second, stormed me to victory to be the only person to be the President of the JCR in the second year, a feat not repeated again!

Rathikant was a caring individual and immensely knowledgeable about all things in life. 

We discussed every subject that was the topic of the day and I was “educated” by him in the college cafe over coffee, scrambled eggs and mince!

Our paths diverged but came together in the early seventies on my return to India. I used to frequent Baroda as I was doing a consulting job for IPCL.

On one occasion I had an invitation to go to Ahmedabad and was told that Rathikant was the Muncipal Commissioner there. I communicated with him and he responded immediately. He had me picked up on arrival, took me home where his gracious and lovely wife cooked and served a truly wonderful Bengali meal, and he made sure I had everything to make my visit comfortable.

Since then we communicated regularly and he went through many ups and downs, but he always kept smiling. Knowing my family history in the media world he kept bouncing ideas off me. It was a truly interesting time as he went stage by stage to establish a truly strong independent media in India. We owe Rathikant an enormous debt for his contribution to freedom of expression in India!

He lost his better half and was in great depression after that but he found away around that by communicating with his friends like Ajay in Sweden and me in Finland. He must have had others but that is not known to me.

He was in Calcutta and then decided to move to Ahmedabad.

In 2008 I addressed an email to Nirmal Jhalla , one year junior to me, about organising a reunion and and Rathikant was thge first to reply. I attach below my email to Nirmal with cc to others and Rathikant's immediate reply to that. 

From: Jacob Matthan

To: Nirmal Jhala ; Rathikant Basu ; Ajay Verma ; Niranjan Desai ; SUJIT BHATTACHARAYA

Cc: Sarwar Lateef ; Peter (Tubby) Philip ; 57er Ashok (Tony) Jaitly ; Davendra Pratap ; Mammen (Rajen) Mathew ; RamuKatakam ; Aftab Seth ; Aftab Baveja ; Ramani Subramanian ; Badrinath Ramanathan ; Dileep Rao

Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 10:32 AM

Subject: Great hearing from you

Hi Nirmal,

Great hearing from you. Noted your new email address.

Rathikant and I got together through LinkedIn. Ajay came to Oulu after he retired. He is back in Lund, Sweden. Niranjan and I have chatted when he was in London. He retired but is working for an organisation in Delhi. Sujit is back online with me through my school network. 

I am thinking of planning a get together in Delhi next December around the time of Founders Day, December 6 2009. 

I am communicating this email to Davendra, Mammen, Katakam, Aftabs (Seth and Baveja), Tony, Tubby, Sarvar, Deepak,  Ramani, Badri, Dileep, to start with.

If all are interested I can start a Google 2009 Reunion Group and we can plan a good bash in Delhi. I have several more from our years on my list. (Ranjit Jacob, George Verghese, Abe Tharakan, Kamlesh Sharma, Karti Sandilya, Ravi Katari, Siddarth Singh, Arun Shourie (if he will codescend to accepting hiis alma mater?), Swami, Mani Shanker, Jose Vellapally, etc.) 

The Delhi-ites can coordinate with the college (Tony, Niranjan, Siddarth, etc.).

If each of you can add 10 to the list, we could have a great get-together and relive the "Sixties". Maybe a mock cricket match as most of us may not be able to waddle to the centre!

I have done this with my school class group of 1959 and we are having our reunion in November 2009 in Mumbai with hopefully over 160 participants (as many wives will also be joining in). Wives of now absent friends are also joining us there.

So much to talk about and so little time ahead! Ajay and I talked non-stop for the two days he spent here in Oulu.

Want to have this as a special tribute to our Kooler Talk Founders - who have inspired me to run the Web Version for over 12 years.

Would love to see you (and all others) there. Calcutta is not on our travel itinerary - Mumbai, Kottayam, Bangalore. Chennai, Hyderabad and finally Delhi.

Regards

Jacob
-- 
Jacob Matthan

 

Oulu, Finland

Blogs:

Jacob's Blog
Kooler Talk - Delhi Stephanians Alma Mater Blog

 

He wanted to open a Tea House in Helsinki but I advised against it as Finland is a land of coffee drinkers.

We communicated regularly and discussed matters of interest to both of us - politics and entertainment being the primary topics. He was a regular reader pf the Kooler Talk Blog run by me.

I found his knowledge immense and I learnt a lot about the Indian Political scene from his vast experience. 

He never shared his problems with me! He only shared his happiness and always told me that I had helped him through his difficult emotional times with my positive attitude.

He promised to make a trip to Finland, but we lost Ajay and that was a sad blow to both of us.  

As soon as I learnt of the passing of Rathikant I sent a message to Sujit who shared with me his deep personal grief in losing Rathikant.

Sujit also shared a link written by a former colleague of Rathikant about the his professional life.

The Taste by Vir Sanghvi: The story of Rathikant Basu and Rajagopalan Indian television industry - Hindustan Times

When I did a Google search about Rathikant I found numerous links of great tribute to this outstanding individual who completely revolutionised the India media and entertainment world by his far sightedness.

Rathikant was more than a friend. A fellow alumni, he always stood for what was right according to the principles we had imbibed from our stay in the college.

May our dear friend rest in peace.

KTWV01-Issue 3: Bloated Head

Hi Web-surfing Stephanians,

Here is Some Late Late News for Stephanians in the New York Area:

Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 16:05:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sreenath Sreenivasan (email supplied)
Subject: FYI... Stephanians in New York

You are invited to the launch of STEPHANIANS IN NEW YORK
-A monthly gathering of former students of St. Stephen's College, Delhi
Wednesday, June 12, 1996, 6:30 pm-8:30 pm
Lancer's Restaurant / 230 E. 44th St (btwn 2nd &3rd) in Manhattan
Complimentary appetizers, cash bar
Come have a drink and catch up... Please spread the word...
Questions? Comments? RSVP? Sree 212-854-5979; ss221@columbia.edu
As Indian weddings cards would say...
With compliments of:
The '70s
Ramu Damodaran, Amitav Ghosh, Sunil "Mankind" Khanna, Padma Rao, Kanwar Singh, Shashi Tharoor
The '80s &'90s
Alok Kumar Jha, Rajiv Kamilla, Nandini Sikand, Sreenath Sreenivasan)

In this issue I want to show you how large a bloated head I have!

When I joined college in 1960 the JCR was dead as a doornail. A new building with dusty green curtains, a sleepy chowkidar called Sahib Singh, but no action. After the Miss Fresher contest it was not worth visiting. All we had was a very old radio on which it was difficult to even pick up All India Radio, Delhi, and a couple of draught boards. Many of us used crystal radio sets (those were the days - I wonder if I could make one of those now!) in our rooms rather than listen to that lousy one in the JCR!

As a first year student from out of Delhi, it was really boring in the college in the evenings, and especially during the weekends. During the year, some of us in Mukarji East (there was no Mukarji West then) decided that we would take charge of the JCR in the following year. We decided that we would to put up a candidate for the JCR Presidency. (Pardon my memory. The correction of Mukerjee North and South to Mukarji East and West was kindly pointed out - quickly, by Shreyas Bordia whose father and uncle were also Stephanians)

Even before the end of the first year, because I had fairly close links with Principal Sircar and Dean Rajpal, as I used to go to St. James Church at Kashmiri Gate and have breakfast with the Principal every Sunday morning, the lot fell on me to stand for the Presidency. The idea was to use my good contact with the hierarchy to get some things done for the students. It was a tactical plan and proposed, if I am not wrong by shrewd Rathikant Basu, then a second year student of Economics and also a Mukarji Court tenant.

No second year student had ever been President of the JCR before. Many of our group felt it was worth attempting as our strategy was to promote the concept that not having the study pressure of a final year student, a second year student was likely to spend more time making the JCR an interesting place.

When I returned to college for the 1961-62 year, it meant that I had have to forgo ragging freshers as I had to be nice to get their vote. (I only ragged one guy who was escaping ragging by claiming to know me personally - whereas I had never met him before in my life.)

I was fortunate to have a solid supporter in my cousin, a fresher, 64er Mammen Mathew, now the Chief Editor of the Malayala Manorama. He, and a group of his friends became my core vote catchers amongst the freshers.

I also had a cousin, 62er Peter Philip, known as Tubby, in the third year. Tubby did his Economics from college, proceeded to Cambridge to get his Masters and then got his Doctorate in Economics from Stanford. He is presently the Managing Director of India Coffee and Tea Distributing Company in Bombay (known to Mumbaites as Philips Coffee and Tea) and he also heads the plastics metallisation plant in Aurangabad, amongst his many industrial activities. So I had a good activator amongst the third year students.

Unlike Dosco-ites and other northern public school students, there were not many from my old school in Stephens, but IAS Tony Jaitly was very much there amongst the MA crowd to canvas votes for me. 63er Sujeet Bhattacharaya, son of then Governor of Reserve bank of India, and my classmate from Cathedral School, Bombay, was also there to support me.

Being of rather happy-go-lucky constitution I was fairly solid among the second year residents.

If I remember correctly, my opponents were Harsh Tankha, a Physics Honours student of the final year and Gulshan Dua, a first year MA student. Both of these were extremely confident that no second year student was going to land up as President of the JCR.

I won this contest easily thanks to the untiring efforts, not only of those named above but a solid group of my election workers which spanned the entire cross-section of years and communities in the college. They included 63er Ravi Batra (I am still trying to decipher whether it is the same Ravi Batra of the Great Depression fame - he certainly looks a twin of my friend from Assansol with his bushy eyebrows), Pondicherry-product French speaking 63er Ajay Verma (great basketball player), East African 62er Niranjan Desai (now probably an Ambassador in the Indian Foreign Service somewhere), 63er Arun (Tich) Agarwal (the Managing Director of MAS, Delhi), tennis star 63er Rajagopal Narayanan, 63er Abe Tharakan (now CEO of the largest sea food exporter in India), 62er Rathikant Basu (who I think is now in some senior IAS post in Delhi), Physics Honours student 63er R. Badrinath who received a Padma Shree for the way he handled the refugees at the time of the Bangla Desh war, Keraltes 63er Ajeet Ninan, 63er George Verghese, 62er Ranjeet Jacob and artist 62er Prakash Joseph, 64er Azhar Siddique (probably managing a five star hotel in the Middle East after his days as the head of Oberoi Towers in Bombay), 64er Ramu Katakam, now a great architect, (whose dad was the last man to report to the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi every night as head of Indian intelligence), Suresh Mehra (a very successful garment exporter now operating from Hyderabad, to name just a few. I also had a few very good supporters from the MA final crowd as 62er Lalit Mohan, 62er Kamalesh Sharma and 62er Chinmoy Banerjee, as they had been close with my brother who had finished at college just before I joined.

I learnt then how it was to organise and win an election, and in the next issue I hope to tell you what we accomplished in that year to make the JCR a wonderful and lively place during the remainder of our time in the college. I wonder how many of the traditions we started still survive.

Thanks to all of you who wrote in after Issue 2. May I remind you once again to register in the official Indian Alumni Register, both in the Stephanian and Delhi University sections - details of which can be obtained from our Archives of the Letters to the Editor.

If you feel that these issues are too brief, please let me know, as I have lots of material. I hope some of you will start to send in your stuff as well. I am hoping with these regular yarns from the past I will bridge the generation gap as you may recognise many of the personalities mentioned - some may even be your dads, and if so, I would certainly like to know. Since we were not co-educational then, I am afraid I cannot claim knowledge of any of your moms!

Yours sincerely

JACOB MATTHAN
Oulu, Finland
BSc 1960-1963
JCR President 1961-1962
Mukerjee Block S-8 (1960-1963)
Gyp: Kundan Singh - a great guy who helped us out in every way possible from jumping gates to fixing the late night register!!