MY TEACHER IN COLLEGE

Towards the end of our under-grad days Bibek Debroy made frequent trips to Cambridge. The whisper was that he had had some grave disagreement with his examiner. That was the BDR I knew, a man who showed little caution or cared to adapt to a situation even for his own interest

- Nilabja Ghosh

THE ‘SELF-OBITUARY’ published posthumously in The Indian Express on 1 November, barely a few hours after the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) breathed his last at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has created waves in social media. Some saw in it a premonition, some sensed a loss of will to live, some called it brutally frank while critics caustically focussed on the mention of the higher Padma awards. Bibek Debroy or BDR, as we called him, was controversial in his lifetime too, a polarising topic at parties, gatherings and social media groups. My association with him started as a student and surprisingly, it shaped my trajectory in life in a large way.

Back in the 1990s, I was a victim of industries abandoning West Bengal for greener abodes, married as I was to a private sector executive. My husband was given an ultimatum by his company to either leave West Bengal for the headquarters or take a pink slip. To make things worse, a year later my two young children ran away to stay with their father. The family moved to Chennai and then to Delhi in a historically transforming country. I remember dining at the newly-opened KFC outlet with police guarding us and visiting the blossoming malls.