Sibdas Chakrabarti OBE – an engineer, husband, father, and friend

 

Figure 1: Sibdas Chakrabarti making a presentation at Bengal 
Engineering and Science University - 10 Nov 2009

I met Sibdas Chakrabarti OBE for the first time on 10 November 2009. That evening, he gave a presentation at the civil engineering department of Bengal Engineering and Science University (BESU), located in Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal (Figure 1). An alumnus of BESU, Sibdas had moved permanently to England in the 1960s. In November 2009, he was visiting his family in Kolkata, and taking advantage of that visit, he had prescheduled the presentation at his alma mater that evening.  

As it happened, that same evening, another person, also visiting from England, was invited to give a presentation in the same civil engineering department. This person was Dr Graham Owens, President of the Institution of Structural Engineers. The two events clashed. I was then a council member and the country representative of the Institution. At Graham’s request, I tried to, and did, resolve the clash between the two events.

I did some research on Sibdas and found that he too was a member of the Institution of Structural Engineers. So I reached out to him over email and asked him whether he would be willing to share his time slot with Graham and me. Being a loyal member of the Institution of Structural Engineers, Sibdas readily agreed. On their part, BESU was happy with this time-sharing arrangement. Thus, I met Sibdas that evening.

Figure 2 shows a part of the audience that Sibdas and subsequently Graham and I addressed that evening. The Vice-Chancellor of BESU, Dr Ajoy Ray, graced the occasion as the chief guest.

 That was my first meeting with Sibdas. I met him only on three other occasions.

Figure 2 Part of the audience at BESU - front row from left: Dr Graham Owens, Dr Hirak Sen, 
and Dr Ajoy Ray - 10 Nov 2009

On our drive back from BESU to Kolkata, I asked Graham, “Did you ever meet Sibdas before?” Graham replied, “Yes, over the years, our paths have crossed a few times.”  I had researched Sibdas’s career earlier. I knew that he had retired as Senior Bridge Engineer in the Department of the Environment of the United Kingdom. And the government had awarded him the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2000. I was pleased with Sibdas’s achievement.

 So I asked Graham, “do you know he is an OBE?” Graham replied, “Yes, I do. But I don’t really know the criteria for making the award.” That hit the wrong chord in me. Because I thought the UK Government would have made the award to Sibdas certainly not out of any political motive. I had looked up the citation for Sibdas’s award, which is in the public domain. He was awarded the OBE for having played a major role in bridge engineering to make him known nationally in his chosen area.

However, I chose not to pursue that line of conversation with Graham further. I knew Graham well as I was his mentor at Imperial College London in the early 1970s. At that time he and I both reported to Dr J C Chapman—he for his MSc dissertation and I for my postdoctoral research work, and Dr Chapman had assigned me to act as his immediate mentor.

A few days after Graham left Kolkata, I invited Sibdas for coffee at the Calcutta Club. This was when I got to know him.  Sibdas and I were civil engineers of the same vintage, though from different universities. I learned that Sibdas lived with his wife Indira in Petts Wood—a small town near Orpington, Kent. Petts Wood is a 25 km ride out of Victoria station. Their only son lived in the US and worked in finance; and their only daughter lived in England, independent of her parents, and practiced law.

At his home in Petts Wood, Sibdas had an outdoor pool in his backyard, which he used as an aquarium. He had a wide variety of fish and was fond of them. He warmly invited me to visit his home for lunch or dinner during my next visit to London. At the end of the meeting, I felt we had hit it off well and became friends. That was my second meeting with Sibdas.  

I met Sibdas for the third time on 13 January 2013 when I was visiting London for a council meeting of the Institution of Structural Engineers. I asked him to meet me over lunch at Selfridges in London. I also asked one of our common friends, Dr Bibhas Neogi, to join us. I have known Bibhas since we were both in our early teens, through an extended family connection. At the same time, Bibhas and Sibdas were contemporaries in civil engineering at BESU in the early 1960s. Bibhas moved to London in 1964; he earned his PhD at Surrey University. Subsequently, he joined the Department of Environment, where Sibdas also worked.

Bibhas married Carolyn in 1978. They lived in Godalming, Surrey—a town some forty minutes' ride from Waterloo. They have two sons. On one of my visits to London, I had visited their home in Godalming.  Similarly, Carolyn and Bibhas had visited our home in Salt Lake, Kolkata.

That day in January 2013, Sibdas, Bibhas and I had a  pleasant lunch meet at the restaurant on the top floor of Selfridges, which was crowded with Sunday shoppers. We caught up and talked incessantly. When Bibhas was briefly away visiting the washroom, I said, “Sibdas, I want to share something with you. You know, during that visit to Kolkata in 2010, Graham told me that he did not know the criteria used while awarding you the OBE. I feel you should know this.” With a twinkle in his eyes, Sibdas said, “Hirak, you know, I too have wondered often how I got that OBE. So Graham is not the only one. That makes two of us.”

I immediately understood why Sibdas had risen to the position of Head of Structures. My respect for him climbed a few notches as I found that he was a man of both humor and humility. He was an awarded engineer but had no pretenses. He told me that his son had recently married a Gujarati girl, and they had happily settled in the US. The daughter was still unmarried but was doing well in her law practice. He struck me as a proud father and a devoted husband. Our friendship took root.

My fourth and final meeting with Sibdas was one year later, on 20 January 2014. Again I was visiting London. This time my wife Kalpana accompanied me. On this occasion, I hosted a lunch. Our invitees were Sibdas and Indira, Bibhas and Carolyn, and another friend, Dr Peter Lim and his wife, Amy.

Peter and I were contemporaries in our PhD research at Imperial College. This was during the second half of the 1960s. Peter and Amy live in a high-end London suburb, which is located some twelve minutes by train from Victoria.  Kalpana and I have visited their home for lunch along with other familiar friends from Imperial College. Amy is an excellent cook, and they are lovely hosts.

 On 20 January 2014, our lunch venue was one of the restaurants in the headquarters building of the Institution of Civil Engineers at One Great George Street. We asked our guests to arrive around midday, but Kalpana and I had reached about an hour earlier. This gave me time to take Kalpana around the impressive building. I took her, among others, to the library of the Institution. I showed her the table and chair in the library that I had used way back in 1970 to write my qualifying exam for the membership of the Institution. I have written a separate blog on that event.

 Our friends arrived at midday. Unfortunately, Amy could not come because she had come down with the flu. It was a cold day, and everybody wore topcoats. So, I took them to the cloakroom for depositing their coats.

Peter was happy to meet with the others. As the four men were all structural engineers, there was immediate bonding with Peter, and Indira quickly got on with Carolyn and Kalpana. We had a convivial lunch that lasted nearly three hours (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Lunch at One Great George Street - from left: Kalpana, Hirak, Peter, Bibhas,
Sibdas, and Indira - photo by Carolyn

When lunch was over, and it was time to part company, we went to the cloakroom and collected our coats and scarves. We found that the attendant had misplaced Peter’s coat. Peter told me on the side that it was an expensive coat. The porter had inadvertently given it to another member, and that gentleman had just taken off with the wrong coat. So Peter ran out of the building trying to locate the member wearing his coat. However, he could not locate the person and returned a little later, huffing and puffing. The attendant gave Peter that member's coat so he could go home on that cold day. Subsequently, I wrote at the appropriate level of the Institution. I made sure that a few days later the Institution returned Peter’s coat and took back the coat the attendant had loaned him.   

Figure 4 On our way out - from left: Kalpana, Hirak, Sibdas, Indira, and Carolyn - photo by Bibhas

During this little commotion about Peter's missing coat, we waited in the main lobby Figure 4. All the while, I had noticed that Sibdas was somewhat subdued. So I asked, "Sibdas, is everything well with you? I find you are not your usual self."

Sibdas calmly replied, “No, Hirak, I am not well; I have cancer of the lung.”

I said, “I am so sorry, Sibdas, to hear this. I hope it is under control.”

Sibdas said, “No, Hirak, it is terminal. Six months ago, they removed one lung. Now I have only one lung, and my days are numbered. The doctors give me no more than six months’

This shocked and stunned all of us, except, of course, Indira, who already knew it. I told Sibdas how sorry I was to hear this. I asked him about his son and daughter. He said his son and daughter-in-law had shifted their base to England to be near him during his last days, and later near Indrani. The daughter had moved in with them at Petts Wood and joined a nearby law practice. Thus, Sibdas and Indrani had the presence and support of their son, daughter-in-law, and daughter, which was a relief to them.  

I asked him about his outdoor aquarium. Sibdas said, “I have given away the fishes and closed the pool because Indrani will not be able to maintain it.”

Kalpana and I returned to our hotel with a heavy heart. We deeply admired Sibdas’s equanimity and appreciated his taking the trouble of joining the lunch under those constraints. A few weeks later, I learned that Sibdas was no more.

I have carried this poignant experience for six years. Now that I have written it down and published it on my blog, my load is lessened, and I find a kind of closure. I will long cherish the memory of my friend Sibdas, an engineer, husband, father, friend, and a great human being.