One of my mentors, someone who had a substantial impact on my life and career passed away a few weeks ago, in Bangalore, India. Akumal Ramachander was a public intellectual, an art promoter and one of the most well-read and educated people I have met. He was persistent, fearless and inimitable.
There are mentors who show you the ropes of a particular field, help you network and give good advice. And there are mentors who help you think about the world differently and whose impact lasts a lifetime. Akumal was, for me, the second kind of mentor.
Photo : with Akumal and Azeem, a friend from Bangalore. 2019.
I met Akumal as a young trainee reporter and a freelance writer. Yes, I wanted to be a reporter and journalist, when I was young and naïve. I distinctly remember the theatrical performance that I was reviewing for the Deccan Herald, around the year 2003 or 2004. I was sitting in the middle rows of an almost full auditorium, when an older gentleman came and sat next to me and introduced himself as Akumal. We started chatting and realized that we both knew the director. We spoke for a bit after the play and exchanged phone numbers. He didn’t have a mobile phone then and refused to get one for almost a decade, hence. “Technology is corrupting,” he had often said. I found him very erudite, garrulous and well meaning.
As a freelancer and writer, I was chasing ideas and people and Akumal gave me quite a few, introducing me to many interesting people. Over the next few months, we’d meet several times, sometimes at a bookstore; other times at a public event which I was covering. Whether it was the US Consul General in India, or anyone in the arts circles in Bangalore, Akumal knew them all. He also knew all the journalists and writers in the city, in addition to having a well-rounded knowledge of the books published by every major press. Infact, every time we met – usually at Koshy’s – the quintessential hangout for journalists and writers of Bangalore – he would have a book. And he gifted a few to me, along the way.
Akumal became a mentor of sorts and a good friend, over the years. I worked in Bangalore for a few years and through many personal and professional crises, I turned to him for advice and he always gave his best counsel.
I moved away to Dubai and lost touch with him and there was naturally, a loss of regular contact. When I was working in Dubai, in my early 20s and was not sure about studying in the US, he was among the two people I consulted, prior to making the move. He encouraged the move and when I ran into some snafus with my visa, he gave me perhaps the most strategic advice that anyone has ever given me, in regards to travel abroad. “Come to India and apply for that visa, you are wasting your time in a third-country, that is not your home country.” Those words were to change my career and life. I followed his advice and within a few weeks, I was booking my flight to the U.S., on route to Syracuse to study at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. That move has shaped both my personal and professional history in more ways than one.
He was ever-curious, ever alert and wanting to share his understanding of the world with others. As a retired professor, he perhaps saw himself as a teacher with anyone who was willing to learn.
I remember Akumal for his generosity of spirit, courage, knowledge and inability to suffer fools. He often got angry with people, sometimes in public, for “defending the indefensible,” as he called it.
Akumal was a Hindu Brahmin with a secular worldview and a love for all regardless of who they are, a trait that I have seen in only a handful of people. At a time of increasing divisions among people, Akumal saw unity. Akumal was a quintessential mensh.
If you want to learn more about him, I recommend watching this BBC Channel 4 documentary about him and his discovery of an American painter and also this article in the New Yorker.
