Network Past Issues

The shy sovereign of hearts
A touching tribute to the youngest professor of IRMA whose life was interrupted by a freak accident

Sitting down to write an obituary for Prof. Monark Bag I find myself affected by, what is known as, the “writer’s block”. On introspection I realize that this is not your regular or quintessential writer’s block or the inability to find the right combination of words. There is, instead, an unwillingness welling from deep within- a strong refusal to accept the fact that Monark is no longer with us. My procrastination is owed to this denial about having lost somebody as near and dear as Monark. However, one needs to adhere to the stereotypical image of being a “mature adult”, accept facts and put one’s thoughts together without allowing regular surges of emotion overwhelm the heart. I can say with confidence, if not with certainty, that the state of mind I find myself in is representative of anyone else’s who had even a fleeting association with Monark and who’s had to come to terms with his sad and unacceptable demise.
I take this opportunity to escape to a relatively distant past when I had not even met Monark but opened an email sent by the Director of IRMA. In it was attachment containing Monark’s CV for recruitment as member of faculty. What intrigued me then was his eyecatching name, his impressive research record and, in a slightly different way, the plethora of subjects taught by him. I vaguely remember having created a mental image of the applicant from my impressions of his CV. His faculty recruitment seminar was also a memorable one where he presented his research with utmost conviction and dourly defended several questions thrown at him by internal and external experts. During the interview, one saw a different Monark altogether. Gone was his earlier assertiveness and conviction and what we could see was  a shy young boy with a disarming smile. If I remember right, this smile, which one realized later, exemplified his personality; it answered several probing questions during the interview and the panel had but no option other than selecting him.

No sooner had Monark joined, than he plunged headlong into every activity of IRMA. He seemed keen to participate in every activity of IRMA’s be it fieldwork, teaching training, or research. He seemed specifically interested in institution building and administration. His intensity in the context of sincerity, commitment, and integrity was unbelievably strong. Even during the unearthly hours of the night one would find him working in his office. While teaching core courses he went to extreme lengths ensuring that his evaluation components would remain immune to the remotest possibility of cheating. He had a penchant for sticking to facts and data. Not for him were flowery, airy fairy descriptions devoid of substance and content. This often rendered his lectures a little heavy but well, that’s the way he was!

That all of us have different shades of grey is an oft-repeated cliché. However, this cliché did not seem to even remotely apply in the case of Monark. It was very difficult for, even among the most cynical of us, to classify him as anything but a wonderful and warm person. He greeted everyone with his disarming smile that seemed to emerge from deep within his heart. When my wife and I were expecting our child he would regularly send emails enquiring whether things were in order while always mentioning that he was eagerly awaiting the arrival of his “little friend”. When Vineet was born he gifted him a plastic toy dog, which remains a key member in his toy world to this day. I remember a conversation with him somewhere near the IRMA chimes when he told me that he was leaving for his home in West Bengal for a few days. Out of curiosity I enquired whether there was a function at home. He said that the only purpose of his visit was to cast his vote in the general elections. I was shocked and asked him whether that was the sole purpose of him going so far. He said “Of course! We all should cast our votes, shouldn’t we?” Such was the extent of his conscientiousness.

One personal incident with Monark will forever be etched in my memory. I had to leave for the US on a nine-month fellowship and was looking out for a resource person to handle my statistics course. Tentatively, I approached Monark with a request to help me being fully aware of the tremendous workload already with him. Without  batting an eyelid he replied, “Sure! I can at least do so much for you, Anand bhai!” I will forever be indebted to him for this kind gesture and forever regret the fact that I have lost the chance to return the favour.

Despite writing about such personal interactions a question lingers, I am sure, in many of us; How many of us can claim that we truly knew or got close to Monark? Notwithstanding his friendly and helpful exterior, Monark was fundamentally a loner. For reasons best known to him, he kept to himself. One would often see him walking with a bag dangling from his shoulders to or from Ganesh Chowk. He did not possess as much as a bicycle saying with his typical smile that he had never bothered to learn to ride any vehicle. Was he then a very serious person? His colourful attire, particularly his kurtas (as observed by many students in his course feedback) exposed a childlike personality, which was further reinforced by the several photographs he had clicked during an IDRC workshop at Udaipur. Around a fortnight before he left us, my wife Vidya and I saw Monark heading towards his home. Vidya invited him for tea but he politely refused saying that he would make it some other time. I agreed, but Vidya would have none of it and strongly insisted that he come over. He spent a good two hours playing with our baby and talking to us about several issues. What was Monark truly like as a person? Alas, we will never know. Could he have survived the fall in the bathroom had he been married, or, if his mother (a wonderful person) stayed with him? Would he still have been in our midst had we, campus dwellers, been a bit more conscious socially? Such counterfactuals tend to haunt us to this day.

 I remember once asking him to disclose the thought process behind his name. He said that his mother wanted to name him “Monarch” but a clerical error at the registration office resulted in “Monark”, which was there to stay. True to his mother’s aspirations, he indeed ruled the hearts of the people he came across, the only weapon at his disposal being his disarming smile. Every morning when some of us go on our walk, we see the sapling planted by our PRM participants in Monark’s loving memory. At least for a fleeting second, Monark’s vibrant and smiling face shines through it and we are left reminiscing about a wonderful soul and how fortunate we were to have spent some time with him.

By: Anand Venkatesh Email: anand@irma.ac.in