Obituary - An ode to Dr Amitabha Mukerjee

How to write obituary about a person who was so full of life. Someone who inspired, someone who cared, someone who, to sum it up, made an impact. Not just on me but a lot of people. But the story I write here is just my perspective because that is what I have seen up, close and personal.

I guess our association started in 1994 when you agreed to guide Vidhani, Lal and me for our B. Tech. project. In those days you were a professor in Mechanical Engineering department of IIT Kanpur. You were part of Robotics lab, but you had active interest in computer vision. Yes, I know people will feel who worked on gesture analysis and computer vision in those days, but you were ahead of times indeed. Besides the B. Tech. project work, one thing which always stuck me was how you interacted with all three of us. Lal was the nerdy gamer types and you always talked that with him. Vidhani was the guy who actually did work on the project, and you used to discuss the project with him. With me it was always discussions around cultural/social things and student-faculty relations.

One thing which impressed me was that you actually took the effort to understand each one of us and customize your communication based on that. How many people really do that? Just shows your empathy and a willingness to go that extra mile to understand everyone. I always found that lacking in lot of professors in college. Most of them were good at understanding studious students but not the cultural/social kind like me. A lesson learnt from you for life.

One more incident I remember from college days is when you invited all of us, who were doing B. Tech. project with you, to your home. I still remember some of us ( Bikash was part of this if I remember it correctly) played a prank on you. We actually asked you for a rope and put it as a tail on you. I still can’t believe that we studied in a time where we could play such a prank on our professor. But this was the nature of our relationships that we could feel free enough with you to do this ans the credit to build such relationships was entirely on you.

During college days, one of your courses became part of IIT Kanpur folklore. It was a course on Mechanical Design where you organized an egg drop contest. In this course students were expected to design a system in which you can place eggs and drop it from top of faculty building and eggs should not break. Some constraints were introduced so that so that you had to use creativity to solve this problem. Most of my friends who were part of this still remember this more than anything else in their college life.

And even after college, our association continued. I tried to meet you on my campus visits and on one of those visits I remember you telling me about Vietnamese coffee. One simple quote from you in one of these trips became a lifetime mantra for me. What I remember you telling me - being a professor is a lifestyle choice, not a career choice. Sounds simple but this statement of yours had a profound impact on me. So many times, in our life, we choose options which are great for our career, not great for life. You wanted to spend a life impacting students, cycling around and other literary and intellectual interests and being a professor in IIT Kanpur campus was a perfect way to do it. This is a lesson I have carried with me throughout my life.

And when you visited Bangalore, I remember taking you to Windsor Manor for a drink. And by this time the hangover of student-professor relationship was almost gone and now it was more discussions between friends. They serve beer in a long glass beaker which comes in two versions half yard and full yard. As you drink more, it gets tougher to balance the drink and it is fun to watch people trying to drink. I remember discussions around how to figure out the correct angles to drink that.

Unfortunately, you met with an accident few years ago and after that you were in coma. Your wonderful family was around you to support you during those years. Communication for most of us was limited to occasional messages and calls with your family. We can only guess what you would have gone through in these years but knowing you from early days, your mind would have been fully active and thinking through some innovative things.

As you rest in peace now after your long ordeal after the accident, all I can say is that you lived a good life, impacted many of us. A person really dies when somebody in this universe thinks about you for the last time and as per that definition you still have a long life ahead in the minds of your student and the stories, we tell our kids.