Remembering Lalita

Lalita Mukherjea of Lalita Larking fame passed away on Tuesday afternoon.
She was the first blog friend I made, and it was wonderful knowing her. Lali knew so much about so many things: books, (she was an avid fan of Pratchett's Discworld, among so many other authors of so many genres), music, poetry, mythology, trees, birds, grammar, lyrics of Mohammed Rafi songs, some of which she translated into exquisite English renditions, and so much more.
Her love affair with cryptic crossword puzzles was the stuff of legend.
Although you could feel completely humbled in the face of her erudition, Lali was always most self-effacing. Her announcement of her illness on her blog was as gently humorous as anything else she'd written.
Words were a passion, and she used them with incredible expertise.
She even cooked with flair, mastery and precision- her famous fried potatoes were cut into exact 1cm cubes.

One of her earliest posts is a wonderful analysis of how relative our perceptions of a single event can be, written in her inimitable style, dealing with her son, a pencil sharpener and, of course, a cryptic crossword puzzle clue as the leitmotif of the post.

Going through each of her posts is a pleasure. Knowing that there will be no more wit and wisdom from Lali is sad indeed.

I see Lalita sitting in ‘her’ chair in her apartment overlooking the lake, scintillating conversation accompanied by the cacophony of nesting birds at sunset,enjoying a cup of excellent Darjeeling tea. The tears well up again. Farewell, my friend.