Today, I have lost a great boss, colleague, mentor, counsellor and superior. Rahul Roy was all of that to me. But above all, he was a great friend. Tomorrow’s newspapers will most likely carry memoirs about Rahul, the professional accountant. But this is about Rahul the person.
In the last couple of years that I’ve worked and interacted closely with him, I’ve come to learn a lot, not just about work and technical aspects, but what it means to be “well read”. His interests varied from accounting and auditing, to science fiction; from contemporary thriller fiction to poetry of the English Romantics; from debating to the latest Bollywood blockbuster movies; from linguistics and literature to diverse culinary and epicurean experiences. And any conversation with this great man meant that one would hear no less than three of these topics mentioned.
A self-confessed slave to perfection, Rahul would never employ short-cuts; yet, he was the kind of man who used to write instant SMS poetry on his way to office. His laconic, pithy one-line emails, almost always cynical yet comic, always stood out amidst the plethora of verbal diarrhoea one got to read otherwise.
In the last few months, he realised that he was behind in the digital age, and so activated a Facebook profile and two blogs – one professional (www.proandanti.blogspot.com) and one personal, which he meant to use as a forum to express his tangential streak but sadly, never ever got down to doing so. As his “Boswell”, it wasn’t uncommon for me to receive requests to update his professional blog at strange times of the day.
In many ways, Rahul was an anachronism. The right man caught in a wrong age. If his thoughts and words seemed esoteric, it was only because the rest of the world was still too young to understand. It was a privilege to learn just about anything from Rahul, that tremendous storehouse and font of all relevant and sometimes obscure knowledge!
I’m told that many years back, in response to a question on why he wanted to become President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, he is said to have remarked in his typical fashion, “As the youngest president, the law of nature decrees that I would be the longest surviving past president”. That, in a line, was Rahul Roy.
If only he could have read this tribute, I know exactly what he would have said: “We are not amused”. Majestic plural in true Queen Victoria style!
R.I.P, Rahul.
