My uncle from Kathmandu passed away on Friday.

He was a cartoonist in a famous newspaper in Kathmandu, and he was a genius. I met him thrice in my life – I know that sounds strange, but my father and his elder sister couldn’t meet each other for fifteen years, because she and her husband ( my uncle ) shifted to Kathmandu and my father was in Assam. One fine day, when I was about 16, there was a knock on the door, and this timid-looking lady asks me “Is this where *my father’s name* lives? It was them!

When I met him the first time, he appeared so eccentric and absent-minded. He was very startled to see my comics-collection, and (I learnt later ) it was because he had collected comics too, when he was young.

He would sit quietly on the living room sofa the whole day, occasionally reading, going through old newspapers and cutting out important bits of news.

He loved old Hindi songs. I made him listen to AR Rahman ( in Tamil ) and he just couldn’t stop smiling along with Paarkadhe and Mama Madurai.

It was the Golden Age of DD2, when Turner classic movies used to show every Friday night, and Buena Vista movies on Saturdays. He would ask my mom to let me watch the Friday movies ( my Board exams were getting closer, and TV was strictly verbotten ). We watched them together, movies like Robin Hood and Three Musketeers and the next day, he would draw scenes from the movie from memory.

When he left, three weeks later, he gifted me a small cardboard box, filled with newspaper clippings, his artwork and some books on nude photography by Andre de Dienes(with strict instructions not to inform my parents, it seems the books were part of his boyhood collection in Shillong) .

The next time I met him was in Kathmandu, after my boards. He showed me around his office, the walls of his tiny room which was covered with cartoons and posters and newspaper clippings and awards. Then he showed me around Kathmandu. Though I stayed inside the house most of the time, poring through his cartoons and clippings ( he happened to have a newspaper clip of JFK’s assassination, among others). He had created this entertaining comic character, a combination of Nepali folklore and Mandrake the Magician, called Samanta the Tantrik. He gave me all the original strips, and a lot of drawing paper from Japan, and asked me to continue the story if I had the time.

The third time was again in Kathmandu, two years later. But I had gone with my friends, and he was busy, and we didn’t meet too much.

I thought I would meet him next year.

I love you, peha. You were always an inspiration for me. Rest in peace.