Bye Bye Deepak, my dear friend!

We mostly share corporate success stories (significant and insignificant) here, but today I wanted to share the story of my close friend Deepak who went too soon... This news flashed across the media and my school and college groups on May 15. My heart was unable to accept this and I was with parents at Bhopal. Bhopal was also the place where most of my memories with Deepak were formed. Could only bring myself to write this now. Those whom Gods love die young! There was not a living soul who did not like him, so I can understand that Gods loved him too.?

Deepak was one of our finest police officers, he worked at Ayodhya in its most troubled times, he worked in Kashmir during the pre and post article 370 times, he was called our very own “Singham” by many who knew him. He was also a very close friend to me who had a significant impact on my life during Gwalior and Bhopal days. I will not talk here about what he did for the country. For that he was wrapped in the tricolour and will forever be remembered by the fraternity. I will talk about what he did for me and the KV Gwalior friends, and the Char Imli gang (Vishal, Navneet, Nitin and me) who spent those lazy afternoons during MACT life and the days of youth parliaments at KV Gwalior.?

Deepak had a fine easy going manner, and could always crack a joke or two post those stressful ragging sessions. I really liked his sense of humour, probably more so because it evolved from shared and sometime together viewing of old Amitabh Bachchan movies. I remember the RBI apartment of his sister where we found and watched treasured video cassettes of old movies like Satte pe satta, and western classic like Duel in the Sun.?

Deepak loved music, movies, long chats and all the finer things in life. It was great that we had a singer (Vishal) in our gang who was a source of immense pleasure with his rendition of old KK classics. Deepak also somehow had a fabulous audio cassette?collection of the golden oldies of 50s and 60s. Many of my Spotify playlist entries are straight from those cassettes I had borrowed from him then to record. I can vividly picture his tall and lanky frame descending from his side room at the Arera Colony bungalow with the cassettes being lent. He was always gregarious and never had a problem helping me or anyone else for any need they might have had. We chatted long about how Panchar boss argued over the contribution for petrol in his kavasaki as Deepak had his Yamaha and I had the Hero Honda. Navneet thought he was the wise one and often had expert comments during our bickering.?

But between all this bickering, Deepak was clear on where he wanted to do and would disappear in his side room from time to time. He did go to IIM Ahmedabad first and then to into IPS. It was fun to meet at Bhopal later on at Lake View Ashoka etc at Bhopal and learn about his Singham style exploits (while the rest of us narrated our stories of corporate bullshit :). His children also went into the finest institutions and?great jobs and he always used to share those developments with us. We talked about coming back to Bhopal at some point of time. But alas, God had other plans with Deepak.?

Our Char Imli gang Whatsap group was always replete with the collegiate conversations still continuing, and I was sad that most of us could not make it to the 2019 reunion. We also could not manage the KV reunion at Gwalior. Chat Imli group feels empty now :-(.?

Bye bye Deepak. You were a great friend, an awesome officer, a great father and a fantastic human being. Heavens are richer and the Earth poorer by your ascent.