Sometimes in my cynicism I wonder if perhaps some human beings are just too good for this often unruly world. As if they don’t really belong here with the rest of us troublemakers, and they were only put here to give our otherwise sullen lives a bit of brightness and joy.

My friend and colleague Alok Baraya passed away yesterday from Covid complications, and he was one of those genuinely good humans who brightened our lives and brought us joy. This alarming Covid surge in India has suddenly hit too close to the heart and has taken away one of the most genuinely decent humans I’ve had the good fortune to know. I had recently spoken to him a few weeks ago about a potential teaching opportunity at Ashoka. We had a nice long conversation after more than a year of not working together and of no longer seeing each other every day. We made plans to meet in Delhi after this current incarnation of Covid went back into its cave to hibernate. Now this same ugly scourge has taken away that chance. We won’t meet in Delhi. We won’t meet in Jaipur. We won’t go on our long-planned retreat in Rajasthan that we had been talking about for years.

When Alok joined Pearl Academy some four years ago, he became part of our leadership team as the head of Institutional Affairs. It took me some time to figure out exactly what his role was in this newly minted position, but it took me no time to take an instant liking to him. Here was this tall, handsome, gregarious fellow who got along with everyone and quickly became one of the ever-present smiling faces in a multitude of group selfies taken after meetings, lunches, events, workshops, and other such lively affairs. When he eventually transitioned into the role of the Delhi Campus Director, I pitied him because I knew it was a thankless and stressful job. No doubt he would be a great public face to the campus and a good co-manager of our faculty, but I couldn’t bear the prospect of his gentle heart and glowing smile being dimmed by having to extinguish a constant stream of small fires that a Campus Director must always deal with. But he thrived (of course) and his smile never dimmed (of course).

I will remember countless discussions with him about life and work. His office was just a few doors down from mine and it was a solace sometimes to just sit with him and unload our mutual frustrations about working and teaching and ensuring that students would always get the best education that we could give them. I was an academic and a designer, and he was an administrator and management guy. These things don’t often mix well. But he lived in a family of creative people and he knew what people like me were all about and shared those sensibilities. He wasn’t a corporate guy. He wasn’t a money guy. He genuinely believed in academics as a noble calling and was genuinely involved in education for all the right reasons. He and I had many ideas about raising the level of discourse amongst our students and staff, to introduce debates to promote critical thinking, and to show how the idealism of design could co-exist with the pragmatism of business.

He wasn’t afraid to speak the truth either. Once, in a particularly frank team-building workshop, he asked me why I always tended to find fault with everything and why I had to always take the stance of the contrarian in administrative discussions. It was a harsh truth spoken with civility by someone whose opinion I valued, and it really made me reflect about myself and made me want to change. I’ve never been apologetic about being a contrarian because the world needs that, but his honest and well-meaning critique made me think about how my message was maybe getting lost in my idiosyncrasies.

More often though, we were in sync and if there was something we felt needed to change in our organization, we tended to agree with each other and worked together to fix it. He was much better at it than me, because he was smarter, more pragmatic, more eloquent, more diplomatic, more concise, and far more charming to boot. I was glad to have him on my side on more than a few occasions. He made my job easier and was a pleasure to work with. It was only natural that we would also become friends as well as colleagues, and I will treasure that.

My heart reaches out to his family – his wife and children whom I’ve had the pleasure to meet. I may have lost a friend – a true gentleman, and a kindred spirit – but they have lost a son, a brother, a husband, and a father. I also considered him a big brother in many ways, but I offer my prayers and condolences to his bereaved family and I hope that Time is compassionate to them and allows them to heal soon. To Alok I say only that I will miss you, and that you were a good friend to me and many others. Godspeed.