Paramesh Ranjan Dhar – An Eulogy

By Hirak Sen

  [Delivered at a memorial meeting organized by the Alumni of Imperial College London based in Kolkata (lovingly known as the Old Centralian) on Saturday, September 9, 2017, in Room #150, at the Bengal Club]

I will remember Paramesh Ranjan Dhar, or Parameshda to most of us, as a man

1.      of elegant style

2.      of inconspicuous charisma

3.      of finely tuned interpersonal skill

4.      of charming social skill

5.      of bold romanticism

6.      of outstanding marketing skill, and last but not the least,

7.      of preeminent expertise in pile foundation engineering.  

In what follows, I will exemplify these with a few anecdotes from his life that I was a privileged witness to. But before I do that, let me tell you, by way of putting this in a well defined time frame, that he was born on 7th August 1933 and died on 5th August 2017, two days short of his 84th birthday.

The year was back in 1963, Parameshda was then an England returned engineer with a high glamour quotient, he was in his very late twenties, and oversaw structural design at Shalimar Tar Products (1935) Ltd, a Turner Morrison Group company, situated at Lyons Range, behind Writers’ Building, an office where post-colonial British culture prevailed, which suited Parameshda to a T, he loved that anglicized ambience, we all did.  He was a handsome man, dashingly dressed in suit and tie, who exuded energy in a sprightly manner, always with a disarming smile on his face.  While in the office, seated at his office desk, as and when the telephone rang, he would pick up the receiver and put it to his left ear all in one single coordinated swing of his left hand, and respond in a slightly embellished baritone voice: “Dhar speaking”, that sound to this day, fifty-four years later lingers in my ear, I can still hear it.  “Dhar speaking” was a response that would convey to the caller that she was speaking to a man of substance, which indeed Parameshda was.  That was Parameshda’s style, which he carried elegantly.  Sitting on the other side of his desk as I was, as a junior engineer, who had come to him for design vetting, I would watch him with admiration.

He was a charismatic man who was simultaneously a charming socializer, a rare combination of charisma and sociability, a sure shot sign of leadership.  And, he was a leader who effortlessly led teams of engineers from the front.  He had a finely tuned interpersonal skill and a large measure of empathy.  He helped his juniors with empathy.  An incident comes to my mind. 

Again, back in 1963, at Turner Morrison, the covenanted officers would go to the dining room at the terrace level for a four-course lunch laid out in proper British style, with complete set of cutleries arranged with spoons and knives on the right, forks on the left, soup spoon to the extreme right, and dessert spoon and fork at top, with cotton napkins, table mats, liveried stewards would serve the four-course lunch, removing, and replacing dishes after each course.  And there would be seniors including some pucca sahibs in that lunch room.  One afternoon, one of our new and fresh young colleagues, a bright engineer, but unfamiliar with that kind of lunch protocol, who was on his very first day at that lunch table, and was fumbling awkwardly with the cutlery, not knowing which one to start with, he had wrongly picked up the dessert spoon for soup—Parameshda saw that, he promptly leaned over and whispered into the ears of that young engineer: “hey, start from the outermost ones to your right and left side, moving inward as each course is served, use the top spoon and fork for dessert, use the outermost spoon on your right for soup, just watch and follow me”, and with this Parameshda straightened himself, and continued chatting with the others around that large lunch table as if nothing had happened. Sitting next to that fresh engineer on his other side, I had seen the episode, and made a mental note of how to help juniors with total dignity.

Paramesh Ranjan Dhar and his wife Shyamoli - circa 1965

Parameshda was boldly romantic who loved poetry, art, literature, and all finer things of life.  Around that time, in 1964, when he was just 30 plus, Parameshda started dating Boudi, who was then Shyamoli Basu, an accomplished young woman, who then lived in Deodar Street with her parents and younger sister.  I knew this because I lived then in Dover Road from which you had to then, as indeed now, enter Deodar Street—our two houses were no more than two minutes’ walk away, and I knew what was going on in the locality.  I was aware of Parameshda’s romantic foray on our locality.  On rare occasions, I would come across Parameshda’s car parked on Dover Road, in front of our house, just out of sight from her parents’ house in Deodar Street, with Paramesh-da in-driver’s seat and Boudi, then Shyamoli Basu, sitting beside him in the next seat, chatting with each other before he dropped her home.  I would briefly say Hi, exchange some minimal pleasantries, and quickly disappear from the scene, leaving the romantic couple to themselves.  The same year in 1964, they married, and they stayed happily married for 53 years until his death parted them last month.  We are very pleased that their daughter Sandipta and son Apratim, two beautiful human beings, are present here amongst us together with Boudi and her younger sister Madhuchhanda Karlekar.  Thank you for joining us this evening.

Aside from his family, Parameshda was deeply attached to his friends, going back as far as his student days in the 1950’s at BE College.  Until recently, I would see Parameshda occasionally at the Men’s Bar at Calcutta Club with some of his classmates, one or two NRI’s amongst them, engrossed in Addaa.  As I would get near their group, Parameshda would chat with me briefly, and help me renew my acquaintance with each of his classmates, most of whom, being all civil engineers, I knew already.  As I said, he had charming social skill.

That he was a preeminent pile foundation engineer, and the main marketing guy at Simplex Infrastructure Ltd, for over several decades, is well known to all of us present here, so I will not dwell on that, nor I will speak about how well he nurtured Old Centralian for over past many years with dedication because again you all know about it.  I will however narrate one other connection that is not known to any of you.

As I said, my association with Parameshda started in 1963, but there is an even earlier connection.  It is like this.  His father Senior P R Dhar, a distinguished professor of English, after he retired from Cooch Behar Government College, joined St. Xavier’s College Calcutta, and taught English part time, giving relief to two other professors who taught English full time.  I was a privileged student of Sr P R Dhar from 1956 to 1958 at St Xavier’s—I remember his Victorian teaching style that was very effective, he was strict in demeanor who never tolerated any gup-shup in class.  I learned seven years later from Parameshda, in 1963, that my former English teacher Sr P R Dhar was Parameshda’s father.  Therefore, last Saturday at an earlier memorial meeting held at the Calcutta Club, I was highly amused to learn from the speech of Parameshda’s sister in law, Madhuchhanda Karlekar that in Cooch Behar, in the 1940's, Sr P R Dhar used to occasionally beat up his young son Paramesh with an elongated cane when young Paramesh would be unmanageably mischievous!  I was amused, but not surprised.  Because I knew his father, the stern disciplinarian professor, the only man who could, and did cane the indomitable Paramesh!  Those days they believed in the adage “spare the rod and spoil the child”, which at least in this one case produced admirable results; not that I am endorsing that adage in this day and age, not at all.   

Paramesh Ranjan Dhar - circa 2015

I will now end my eulogy of Parameshda by recalling one single quality, from amongst his many qualities, that I admire most and have tried to emulate.  This quality is unquestionably his courage and fortitude.  I say this because I am awestruck, absolutely awestruck by the courage and fortitude he displayed while fighting, and defeating the dreaded disease of cancer that he was afflicted with, suddenly as if like a bolt from the blue, in 1982; he fought the disease indomitably for twenty-two long years and finally got rid of the malignancy in 2004.  He defeated cancer over a twenty-two-year battle.  Any other person would have caved in much earlier, but not Parameshda.  What is more, during this period of twenty-two years, he never moaned about his illness to his friends, and after defeating the disease he continued to celebrate life for another thirteen years.  Finally, last month, he died as he had promised to himself, not of cancer but of renal failure that was totally unrelated to cancer.  It is this courage and fortitude, and his zest for life, that I admire most in him, and I salute him for that.

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