What can one say when one loses a VERY dear friend, one who was way more than a brother.

Bunny (Harjit Singh) Mehta and I were colleagues way back in 1975, both young assistants in Malayalam Plantations.  While the two of us never worked on the same estate or, for that matter not even in the same district, we just appeared to hit it off and almost naturally gravitated towards each other and became good friends.  A relationship which remained strong till such time as I was with Malayalam Plantations and then simply withered away post ’79, when I relocated from the south to Assam and then later moved on to Dubai, which was followed by a five-year sojourn in Sri Lanka.

Fast forward to 2005, which is when we moved in lock, stock & barrel to permanently plant ourselves in the Nilgiris.  Bunny was then the manager of Nonsuch Estate, a prime property in the district.  It was almost as though the intervening quarter of a century had never existed.  Back we were to meeting each other regularly, hobnobbing about all sorts of innocuous stuff.  Whenever together, we were always well fortified with plenty of liquid sustenance sloshing around in our innards, which naturally led to conversations slowly creeping up in volume to, quite often, end up in crazy and meaningless arguments.

A couple of years after we built and moved into our “Khanna da Thikana” (which loosely translates into the permanent abode of the Khanna’s) the Mehta’s started the construction of their house all of 400 meters away as the crow flies, bang across us on the opposite side of a narrow valley.  Which led me to promptly initiate a tree planting drive so that “I don’t have to see your undies drying, fluttering around in the breeze every time I look out of my office window”!

Quitting his job at Nonsuch in 2015, by which time his house across the valley had been completed, my friend established and started a small homestay style resort (the Tamarind Tree) in Masinagudi, a village on the periphery of the Madhumalai wildlife reserve.  Totally ill-equipped to manage an establishment of that nature, in just a couple of years, while he shelved the idea of running the resort, the small personal house he had built on the property became Bunny’s hidey-hole and temporary escape from his wife, Anju.  Almost naturally, in short time and whenever I needed one, also became my temporary refuge from my other half.  All of 75 minutes away from my Thikana, I’d regularly ride down to Masinagudi on my trusty Bullet to spend a couple of carefree days there shooting the breeze with my buddy.

With not even the slightest shade of grey in between, bunny’s relationships were strictly Black & White.  While I qualified as being a star performer in the former category, God AND the courts were required to help those who fell into the latter one.  For us, the whites, the gentleman would move heaven & earth to selflessly help out should any assistance of any kind ever be required.

A flamboyant dresser, Bunny would regularly attire himself in orange coloured chinois, with PINK socks, peeping out from under the trouser cuffs.  While I’d refuse to even be seen dead in that circus joker apparel, that gaandu (look that up in Google) carried it off nonchalantly.

There is so much and so much more to share that I could just go on relating stories and anecdotes, which would have carried on multiplying had fate not intervened.

Out on his regular evening walk, whenever he was down there, in a remote area behind Masinagudi, there having been no eyewitness to the freak accident which did him in, and while this is personal conjecture, it has been pieced together from seeing his injuries and the later autopsy report.

While he’s gone way too soon, it was the way this loving partner & father, a fiercely loyal friend and the perennial rebel would have liked to go – brushed away by an elephant!

Sleep well my friend till, with wide grins similar to the above, plastered across our respective mugs, we meet again to carry on from where you’ve left me – to abuse each other in chaste Punjabi.