There were four of us who travelled to Delhi University on the U Special, every day in the late Sixties: Madhoor Kapur, Arati Kaul, Bunny (“I dare you to call me TS,” he joked quite recently) and myself. He was turbaned, then, and mostly silent during the long ride to College — Bunny was the shyest towering figure I had ever met. He opened up gradually, and then our bus rides weren’t nearly as long, as we talked about all sorts of things. Books, and teachers, and tutorials — and theatre. He didn’t act, then, though, except when Madhoor insisted that we all take part in his Happening at Triveni! Bunny’s turban identified him immediately.

After St. Stephen’s, he took off for Balliol (Oxford) and I left for the US, but continued to receive long, happy letters from him saying that finally, he was “learning History as she should be taught”.

Bunny was one of a group of young men and women who entered Indian publishing in the 1970s, when most of our contemporaries were joining the civil services, academia or the corporate world.

He rose to become one of its most successful, and professional, practitioners; initially with Macmillan & Company, later and finally, with Sage India, which he founded in 1983.

When, by chance, we found that we had both returned to India and joined publishing houses, I teased him about going to work with the Brit — and he ribbed me for being stupidly “nationalistic”. A thoroughgoing perfectionist that he was, he mastered the business, as well as the art and craft of publishing while at Macmillan, then put everything he had learnt to great use at Sage.

... contd.