Alas... looking at the photos, selfies and countless verbosity overflowing over the networking sites and memorials, I wish if only this support was extended to Sri. M P Ranjan while he was alive!!

I am not making a blanket comment about everyone. I often found Sri. M P Ranjan, who becomes almost an iconic figure for a student during his or her nid days is being pushed to oblivion when the same student became a professional. Ranjan's iconic provocative, candid and fearless nature with no nonsense approach, the qualities every student's utopia, also created a distance when the same students became professionals and also for authority and the world outside. Most of them kept a safe distance from him as he often caused ethical, moral and administrative inconvenience with his provocative and probing questioning. With his integrity intact, commitment profound he became the last word wherever he went and whatever he did.

Few days before his retirement at 60, I met him in connection with his consent for to be the part of curriculum planning group at Ambedkar University's upcoming design school in Delhi. I was curious with his stature and contribution why he was not given an extension (also in Universities professors retire at 65). I asked him about it. He had a painful smile on his face. He said " when you have conviction, intention and integrity you will always be inconvenient to every system. So system will flush you out. It's a design problem. Either you continue to be inconvenient and move on to find a solution or you compromise. It is choice one has to make and I prefer the first".

When I see the activities around his death ( although it is very heartwarming) I remember those prophetic words of Ranjan. Its look like living Ranjan was inconvenient to system but his memories, that would not raise a probing question now have become a convenience.

Along with selfies with Ranjan, can there be a discussion on the values that made Ranjan: probity in system, that could be the real tribute to that wonderful soul.