He was always surrounded by friends, though the nature of the circle changed over time. In the early days, they were all fellow travellers, equals, with similar views, similar ambitions, similar trajectories. Many from that group drifted away over the years, for various reasons. Tapas Sen was the only one who stayed close all through my father’s life. Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Salil Chowdhury moved to Bombay and became part of the commercial film world. Though every time they met my father, which was no longer very often, I could still see a spark of the old camaraderie.

Whenever Salil-kaka came home, he and my father would ask each other about common friends from the IPTA days. Sometimes Salil-kaka would sing songs from their activist past. But it was also clear that they lived in different worlds now, that the only common thread was the nostalgia for their time together, when they shared the dreams of a revolutionary future.