It is hard to say very much when someone you’ve known since you were not yet 17, and you’ve sat in the same undergrad class with, ups and leaves. I’ll follow him into the clouds one day, but until then it is only memory. Memories give meaning to life. What, or where, would we be without them?Kamal – Professor Kamal Aron Mitra Chenoy – breathed his last on Saturday, October 10, at a time when India is seething with protest to uphold the democracy against very powerful “internal threats” (to turn Golwalkar’s meaning on its head) to it. The fight is not going to be easy, but Kamal would have been up for it even in his weakened state. Yesterday, the day he departed, his and my hometown, Delhi, the grand city of culture, empire, struggle, filth and smog, where memories come alive, was under siege by not just the local police but also our paramilitary forces, withdrawn from the borderlands to stand duty in the nation’s capital to challenge democracy’s young partisans drawn from all parts of India. Young Indians saw the irony, brushed aside the harsh lockdown conditions, and resisted peacefully anyway, seeding a hundred Jantar Mantars. In the line of work, I last saw such harsh restrictions on citizens in Kashmir in 2019, when its autonomy was decried.Knowing Kamal, this is when he might have been at his best – his debater best, his protester best, his professorial best. He was very good with each of those things. He had turned frail. Alzheimer’s had been his companion of late. But give or take, chances are Kamal would have been at the barricades, which are in reality broad-spectrum things and not just ugly physical barriers, rolled out in our case by a harsh, repressive regime to thwart peaceful protesters with whom it refuses to talk but hides behind tinsel and publicity. The military dictatorship next door at least does not turn on such refusal on tap.Kamal was an innocently handsome and a gently romantic chap, in his heart a poet and a revolutionary who, when young, could cite leading poets and great literature. Even his great wit, which marked him out anywhere, was subtle and underscored softness, although there could be an occasional outburst of earthy unsubtlety.In recent decades, Kamal could be seen travelling up and down the country as a part of people’s enquiry commissions and people’s tribunals. He counted among his friends and acquaintances leading intellectuals, social activists, and political fighters who stand up for those oppressed and harassed by establishment-protected goons who may parade in any guise.When I opened my eyes this morning and was given the sad news, I held fast, saw Kamal in my mind’s eye and then tried to put the image behind me and just stared into space. But as I tried to stand, I felt I was unsteady and needed to sit down. I just asked my old friend to move on ahead.Anand K. Sahay is a veteran journalist.