So long, Doc, and thanks for everything

It's already too late, for some are gone, but I owe an army of people thank-you notes.

- ROHIT BRIJNATH

The teacher who unravelled poetry for me. My dad's colleague who guided me through an early bout of despondency. The journalist who spent nights in the early 1980s on a typewriter teaching me how to write leads.

And also the broad-shouldered man from Kolkata, his love for learning inexhaustible, his manner unaffected, his time-keeping awful (though he always showed up), his generosity unceasing. Ask his friends and they can't remember when he took a fee from a patient. I called him Doc and he died two weeks ago.

My friend, 18 years older, was an Olympic medallist in hockey but never showed off about it. He worked in cricket and was a doctor and yet for many he was just Leander's dad. Vece Paes, specs sliding down his nose, would beam at that label. His tennis-playing boy was his life.

From Australia a friend sent an image, the picture not sharp but the message clear. It's Doc running with an eight-year-old Leander in the Calcutta Cricket & Football Club. He's tossing a rugby ball to his son but handing over things far more precious. Coordination, ball sense, a feel for sport, a sense of belonging.

In the hectic arc of a sports journalist's life, you collide with biomechanists, coaches, race starters, physios, podiatrists, volunteers, drug testers, but no tribe is as fascinating as the parent. They rise before light, pack lunches, hover at practices, muttering prayers, writing notes, dispensing water and unwanted advice, some pushy, others patient, all trying to blow life into a child's dream.