Obituary of Gian Prakash Dodeja

My father-in-law died in the afternoon of Tuesday, 12 May 2015. On an impulse, I started to look at some of our old photographs. I am sitting here, looking at some of my pictures of him. Goodness, so many memories! He and I first set eyes on each other in early April, 1982, a month before my marriage. I’d come to visit Mini in her hostel room. As chance would have it, my PIL (that’s pop-in-law) and my MIL come to visit her at the same time. When they walked in they found me sitting perhaps a millimeter and a half closer to his precious daughter than they thought appropriate. PIL had a “look” on his face: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was disturbed, but he was certainly far from being fully turbed. He probably thought I had evil intentions, and of course I didn’t. (Okay, I’m lying.) That’s my first memory of him, and I remember a distinct feeling of awe. But those days he had plenty of hair on his head. Maybe that was it. He was then working at the Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited. A few months after we were married (Mini and I, I mean, not he and I) he went off to take charge as Executive Director of its largest unit, the one at Bhopal. He was actually at Bhopal during the gas tragedy of 1984, and it was only the direction of the wind at the time that prevented huge fatalities in the mammoth BHEL plant. Worried, we called from Delhi, but he could hardly talk to us. He was busy arranging for the care of people to whom he owed no responsibility, but whom he was in a position to help. Many of the victims were admitted at BHEL’s own hospital on his instructions. Subsequently he and his wife Chandarkanta (then, and still, my MIL) initiated a charity project for the widows. This project was inaugurated by Mother Teresa in 1986. After retirement he was a regular at the Delhi Gymkhana Club. In fact, he and I have played a good deal of tennis, a game to which he was much addicted. I remember that he would try to play even if it was raining. I remember distinctly that he would sulk when he couldn’t. I remember more distinctly that I usually defeated him. But what I remember with the greatest vividness is the dance floor at the Club. On Christmas nights, and on New Year’s nights, year after year, Mini and I would frequently stop our own dancing to see the picture of my tiny MIL wrapped in her tall, handsome husband’s arms. The contentment on their faces, the contentment on their faces, oh, the contentment on their faces… to our fanciful minds it seemed that the world belonged to them. I grieve for him, but I cannot begin to imagine what his passing must be like for her. He accepted his retirement with grace, but he longed to work. I recall his mentioning once, “Suneet, people who continue to work are really lucky.” I suppose that a razor-sharp mind such as his would need constant intellectual stimulus. His formative years had had the disadvantages of the partition and of refugee camps, but these didn’t slow his march towards academic and professional brilliance. He became a first-position gold medalist in at the Engineering College of the prestigious Benares Hindu University, his marks shattering university records. He was one of the engineers on the team that built India’s first diesel locomotive engine (circa 1964). Siemens and General Electric in Germany and in the US offered him attractive jobs. He led the team that built our first fully battery operated vehicles: these were the only vans used at the Asian Games village in the 1980s. After his retirement he worked the stock market better than do most fund managers. Tiring of stocks, he turned his attention to the evil versions of Sudoku, rarely finding a puzzle worthy of his mathematical genius. In his last illness, he was busily Sudoku-ing before and after his coronary stenting. Considering that he was awake during the procedure, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he was Sudoku-ing merrily while the doctors grunted under the strain of stenting his clogged arteries. But for all of his professional excellence, if I were to describe him with a word, it would be “human”. Being a good husband and a good father, even being a good grandfather, were more important, I think, than being a good engineer. He believed in the old-fashioned, perhaps obsolete, values of morality and honor. He would prefer to, and did, indeed, die before earning a single dishonorable rupee. Honor also meant being a man, and (I can’t say I’m praising him here) – he hated showing weakness. After the recent round of coronary stenting he said to me with smug satisfaction, “They put in six stents”, as if daring me to beat that. Since he had already received three stents in 2009, Mala likes to think that the first three were for his three daughters, and the last six for his six grandchildren! I wouldn’t be surprised. Like I said, I’m going to grieve. But pop-in-law had a good life. He lived long and well. He achieved recognition. Most importantly, he received love. For the last five years he has been living with his two younger daughters. Mini and I, as his senior daughter and son-in-law, have always held a mild grudge since we felt that we had the first right to Papa and Mama’s company. But Mini and I cannot deny that he was, for Mala and Meera, and for Ninad and Rahul, highly special, and that they rained a truly astonishing quantity of love and caring on him. His wife, his daughters and their husbands, and his grandchildren constituted his entire universe. His entire universe was with him in his last days. What a good way to go. Well, PIL, wherever you’ve gone, I hope they have Sudoku up there. And when, finally, I meet you, I’ll play tennis with you again. And I’ll win, I promise. Rahul