Nirendra Nath Das Sarma was 103 years old when My Kolkata spoke to him about a bygone era. He was then at his desk for almost 12 hours a day. He passed away last week at the age of 105. His grandson, Abhinav Dasgupta, now based in Mumbai, reminisces about his fondest memories of his grandfather.
My grandfather, Nirendranath Das Sarma, passed away in Kolkata on Friday, January 17. He was 105.
Now, if that number at the end of the sentence makes you jump out of your seats, let me tell you the secret to his longevity — he was always active, always doing something of consequence, never spending a dull moment till practically his last few days. And when you respect time, as his life showed, time returns the favour and accords you enough from its bounty — well, enough to live through both the Spanish Flu and COVID, as it were.
Das Sharma at 103 years old, at his desk My Kolkata
My earliest memory with Dadu (as I called him) was being taken to pre-school every morning and the Lions Safari Park every afternoon when we used to live in Southern Avenue. As far as the latter was concerned, we never missed a day; and once there, never missed a swing, see-saw or jungle gym. Durga Puja would be spent doing the joyrides at Deshapriya Park, and Kali Puja looking at the Dasha Mahavidya Puja, not too far from where we used to live. The discipline around all these was exemplary; and now as I see it, was certainly the foundation of the discipline I’ve consciously tried to maintain across work, family and quizzing.
With my father being in the merchant navy and out for months at a time, he was the elder male member my brother and I naturally looked up to in our growing up years. Like him, I would lead a somewhat unnecessarily regimented life, with fixed study and meal timings. And like him, I would not spend a single afternoon at home, going out for a game of cricket or football while he would take a walk at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club with fellow seniors.
Speaking of which, my best memories with Dadu have to be associated with cricket. Through the 1990s, there was not a single match India played and Doordarshan telecast that we did not watch together; we celebrated together when India whitewashed England at home, and experienced the same gloom when India lost the World Cup semi-final to Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens (as recently as 2023, he told me how he watched the World Cup final with great hope that India would win this time; it was in all likelihood the last India game he watched).
Dadu’s other major obsession was history. He offered to help me with my history project on World War 2, and ended up reading everything he could lay his hands on from BH Liddell Hart to William Shirer – with the outcome that I had so much content (in a pre-Internet era) I had no clue where to begin. He insisted that I enter the segment about Subhas Chandra Bose’s role in World War II (which I am sure no one else in class did), and my chronology table at the end of the project had the last entry not as August 15, 1945 (date of the Japanese surrender), but August 18, 1945 (Taihoku air crash where Bose is believed to have perished). This intertwining of India and the world fascinated him quite a bit; and my old copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which he borrowed to read on my recommendation, still has the word Sanskrit (at the cost of spoilers) underlined in pencil.
Das Sarma (right) with his sons, after his wife’s demise in 2016 Courtesy Abhinav Dasgupta
Dadu was probably the only person in my immediate family not entirely unhappy about me ditching medicine and engineering, and heading out to study English literature after school. He was keen for me to do an MA and PhD, and potentially enter academics; and at least one of my very close childhood friends enjoyed his admiration till the very end because he chose to do just that!
Given how fit and full of energy he always was, most of us expected him to complete a century. The life-threatening respiratory condition in 2012 therefore took us all by surprise; but coming back from the brink of death probably strengthened the will to live, because what he achieved in the last decade of his life is nothing short of extraordinary.
After my grandmother’s death in 2016, Dadu finally felt free of familial care and devoted the remainder of his life to deep academic study. He went back to history and to research just the way he knew it, reading more books and writing. And out of it came Glimpses on Mahabharata to the Mahatma, where he tried to trace genealogy from Manu to Mohandas — a Herculean effort for a 99-year-old. The COVID pandemic delayed this book seeing the light of day, but it finally found a publisher, and a few copies in book form are now available with me. Following this, he compiled Phire Dekha (Looking Back), an anthology of writings collected from various members of the family (an unpublished poem of mine seems to have made its way there too) and then wrote My Life, a fascinating autobiography which began beautifully but seems to have been curtailed towards the end given his rapidly failing eyesight (he was 104 by then).
Das Sarma began work on his book at 99 years old
When the reading and writing finally stopped around the time he turned 105, it was time for us to accept that a great life was coming to an end. He was a little all over the place mentally, and by the end of 2024, was largely confined to bed. A person who gave every flying minute over a century to something to keep in store finally had his night coming, and I was very fortunate to have met him one last time and said my farewells when I went to Kolkata last weekend for the Kolkata International Quiz Festival. I got the fateful call when I was about to board a flight from Bengaluru to Mumbai, and unfortunately could not be present for the last rites. I hope to be in Kolkata for the shraadh next weekend though, and to join everyone in celebrating the life I was so fortunate to have seen at very close quarters over close to four decades.
Nirendra Nath Das Sarma with his great-granddaughter during Durga Puja 2024 Courtesy Abhinav Dasgupta
Dadu outlived all his siblings, and was very hopeful that his male bloodline would continue. This (as of now, at least) does not look likely, with both children in the generation after us being daughters. That said, hopefully he left with a lot of pride in all of us, especially in his great-granddaughter (separated by a staggering 99 years) with whom he went hand in hand to the Durga Puja pandal last year — just as he used to with her father so many years ago.
P.S. Dadu was a closet Communist, too, so it is not unsurprising that he passed away 15 years to the day Jyoti Basu died, in the same city.
Born in Kolkata and educated in Kolkata and Delhi, Abhinav Dasgupta is a financial services professional now based in Mumbai. He spends his spare time quizzing, reading and writing; and is among other things a four-time winner of the Gold Plate at the Kolkata International Quiz Festival