Bunker Roy was quite possibly the coolest man to enter India’s development sector. He arrived like an unguided missile, apparently indifferent to convention, hierarchy or the established rules of engagement. But make no mistake. The former national squash champion knew exactly where the ball would land, when to strike and how to win the point. Bunker was never an unguided missile. He simply refused to share the flight plan.For more than five decades, I had the privilege, and occasional exasperation, of knowing him as a friend, mentor, collaborator and formidable adversary in argument. Sometimes all four in the same afternoon. Bunker had a singular relationship with his mission.Nothing was allowed to get in its way, not institutions, convention, colleagues or sometimes even those closest to him.Every so often, he would offer a fleeting glimpse of the tenderness beneath his formidable exterior. Then the shutters would come down. There was work to be done.Also read: Legendary Activist Bunker Roy, Founder of the Barefoot College, Dies at 81Could you change Bunker’s mind once he had decided on something? Good luck. I had some of the fiercest arguments of my professional life with him, particularly over a proposed code of conduct for voluntary organisations. I believed passionately in the need for one. Bunker had his own views, delivered with that mischievous expression that suggested he was enjoying the argument rather more than I was.Having dismissed practically every point I made, he announced that when the code was finally ready, he expected me to pay for its printing out of my own pocket. The audacity! He could leave you furious, intellectually challenged and, rather annoyingly, better for the encounter.Bunker Roy. Photo by arrangement.Perhaps it was the squash champion in him. Every proposition was a ball to be returned, preferably at an impossible angle. When I became particularly emphatic in expressing an opinion, especially one that contradicted his, he would occasionally adopt the persona of “Uncle Bunker”. It was his way of reminding me who had been around longer. I was rarely inclined to concede the point. Yet some of my greatest professional education came from those exchanges.Bunker and I were involved in establishing two remarkable institutions, Ashoka in India and SRUTI, more than four decades ago. Both brought together people who believed India’s voluntary sector could become a powerful force for change.Among those involved, Bunker stood out for the sheer force of his engagement. He was not content to lend his name or offer occasional wisdom.He was involved, decisive and remarkably clear about what needed to be done. Where others saw complications, he saw decisions waiting to be made. He had little patience for institutional rituals. His instinct was to cut through the noise and get on with the work.Through Barefoot College in Tilonia, Bunker challenged deeply entrenched assumptions about knowledge, expertise and power. He understood, long before it became fashionable development vocabulary, that people living in poverty were not passive recipients of charity. They possessed intelligence, ingenuity and the capacity to transform their own lives. He built an institution around that conviction. His faith in ordinary people was matched only by his impatience with institutions that presumed to know what was best for them.But to understand Bunker’s contribution, one must also understand Aruna Roy. What would so many of us have done differently had we never entered the lives of Bunker and Roy? More importantly, what would India’s development sector look like without them? It would certainly have been poorer, less courageous and considerably more boring.Also read: A Rajasthan College is Creating Warriors Who Take On Gender Injustice and Climate ChangeBetween them, they challenged institutions, unsettled comfortable assumptions and shaped generations of activists and development professionals. Their influence lives in the countless people whose understanding of justice, dignity and public service was transformed by knowing them.I have been thinking about the last letter Bunker sent me. It contained a memorandum of understanding and a rather extraordinary declaration: “Now that we have all grown up, let’s work together.” I nearly fell off my chair. Had Bunker finally mellowed? Had the great contrarian discovered compromise?Fifty years earlier, I suspect the letter would have read, “Now that you have grown up.” The inclusion of “we” was practically a revolution.I deeply regret that in recent years I did not get to fight with him nearly enough. There were arguments still to be had and, no doubt, several occasions on which he would have dismissed me with that familiar smile. I regret, too, that I did not return to Tilonia to spend time with him and Roy, who quite literally held my hand when I first came into their home nearly fifty years ago.It seems entirely characteristic that Bunker chose to leave this world in Tilonia, the place he made his life’s work, with Roy beside him. Even his departure, it seems, had to be on his own terms.There is much I wish I had told him more often. That I did not merely admire him, I adored him. That our fiercest arguments were among my greatest lessons and that his determination to change the world, rather than simply lament its injustices, remained a constant inspiration.Looking at the voluntary sector today, I am more convinced than ever of the importance of the principles we once fought over so passionately. Integrity, accountability and a code of conduct were never merely institutional concerns. They were about protecting the credibility and purpose of a sector to which we had both devoted so much of our lives.Bunker leaves behind generations of people whom he inspired, mentored, challenged and occasionally told off with breathtaking arrogance. They will carry his work forward, although I doubt any will quite replicate his particular combination of humour, sarcasm and speed. There was only one Bunker Roy, the great Don of India’s development sector, a man who made the rest of us think harder, work faster and question more.I refuse to say goodbye. Knowing Bunker, he is probably watching the outpouring of affection with considerable amusement, shaking his head at the sentimentality and laughing at how much he is missed. Perhaps, at last, I am grown-up enough to tell him what I should have said more often: I loved you, Uncle Bunker. You made my life, and the lives of countless others, richer and infinitely more interesting.And Bunker, about that MoU. For once, you’ll have to wait for me.Poonam Muttreja is the executive director at the Population Foundation of India.