Détente With Debroy — A tribute To Moving On

Bibek Debroy was erudite, opinionated & accessibile. That made him a “catch” for my team when we ran Zee Business for ZEE TV. In those days, delays were part of the game & in a recorded show Bibek, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, NK Singh, Rakesh Mohan, Amit Mitra & if i recall correctly the chiefs of CBDT & CBEC were in my studios. To the uninitiated that meant the star econocracy of India under one roof. In the middle of the recording, while the camera folks & our control room dithered over this & that, Bibek had had enough. As we simulated a break, he decided that he must leave. I thought speaking to him apologetically would suffice. I was wrong. With a sadistic smile on his face, his photochromatic lenses turning darker as i raced to his waiting car, he would have none of my persuasion. Logic? His “orthodontist” was waiting. I feared that my show would look weird with one speaker going amiss midstream. Importantky, i must admit with enduring regret, i lost my composure on Bibek rather inelegantly

Some years went in a (wasted) cold war, but phew, as luck would have it, we found each other in eye lock at the edit page meetings of Dr Sanjaya Baru, chief editor of The Financial Express — yours truly being resident editor of the Delhi edition, Bibek being the consulting editor. I wonder if Dr Baru had any idea of our colourful history. If he did he didn’t let me in anyway. The queries on what i thought of what Bibek had just said weren’t easy with the warring candidate sitting right across the coffee table! Mercifully, one day, to the tooth story was buried (sans specifics) & i could start afresh savouring & critiquing the man’s remarkable repertoire — from quaint laws the goras had left us to what Vijay Kelkar must do on the administered price mechanism for petroleum goods. Opine he must, but I felt catharsis that only “Détente” can bring

As the years rolled by, I did i made it a point never to visit the man as chairman of the Indian PM’s economic advisory council lest it appeared opportunistic

A breakthrough came with the appearance of Suparna (Debroy). Like with Dr Baru, she didn’t betray any baggage. Bibek seemed to have held back on our history..

Oriental food from Panda Wokk (or sweets from Halwai Devi) started going to the Debroy household twice a year with Bibek sending detailed & exceedingly generous praise each time

This Diwali, we had no bandwidth to continue the gastronomic connect

Bibek would leave on Diwali.

I remain grateful to you, Bibek. Over everything else, for your largeness of your heart. Travel well. May be one day, we can address whether that damn orthodontist was for real…or should we?

Om Shanti🙏🏽