Narendra affectionately known to his friends as Nai Boy

This is not an obituary blog, but If you read the note on Steve Irwin then this letter deserves a spot here too. This was a letter that I sent around to my peer announcing my friend's demise, I will edit it according here with translations and subtexts where appropriate. >>

Narendra - Pondicherry University 1998-2000, born in May of 1977/78

The sad news and the first news of this morning was that Narendra passed away. To those of us that knew him from Pondicherry, he was a great source of knowledge especially about the flora and the insect fauna, and nothing less about other taxa. He was a frenetic conservationist, taking it upon himself to correct the world and all around him, starting of course with his friends.

As with most of us, he too had to resist the familial pressure for choosing a career in the wildlife sciences. And for his modest background and family pressures, he did well. In the years since Pondicherry, he worked at IISc with Dr. Sukumar's group. His longing goal was to do his PhD on the dholes (wild dogs, another reason for his nick name - Nai in Tamil means dog). He was also engaged to be married to his girl-friend of a few years.

The years 1998 to 2000 were great at Pondicherry and would have been very very different if not for Nai. We made excursions together to Valparai, Cunoor, bird watching early mornings of the exams after drinking all night (he never drank much till some years later), playing pranks, feeding inedible hostel food to Nai's pets (also nais, you can see why he got his name, or was it my inability to pronounce the letter R); and most importantly for those of you disconnected with Pondicherry University history and our batch of ecology, he was one of the band of five that organized, rallied, and led a protest through the university and closed the university for a whole day (even today, this event supersedes all my degrees on my resume, thanks to Nai). The last point only emphasized his committment and support to causes that he believed in.

My last memories of him are from the summer of 2002. I visited with him on his field site. He has always been a warm host and so are his parents. We had corresponded as recently as a month ago fixing to meet in Madras in December. Sadly this will not be.

those were the days - a sign of times passing by and people passing on.