Executive orders can impact lives significantly. When Manohar Parrikar decided that iron ore mining should stop in Goa, it must have had a crippling impact on the livelihood of many. I know because a family member, who was employed as the head of corporate communications with one of the Goan mining giants, suddenly lost his job. I got more worried than my jobless relative because I started thinking of his wife and two daughters, whom I adore and who are best pals of my own daughters. I even started looking for a job for him in Delhi, the city from where he had graduated in the 1980s.

I later realised I was acting stupid because my relative, being his family’s sole provider, had thought of an alternative. The man, my wife’s first cousin, returned to journalism, the first love of both our families. He carries on steadily in Panaji today although at a smaller salary.

But that is not the end of the story. Soon after the big change, I was in Goa on a family vacation and we were staying at their home. I was worried that my relative must be very upset with what had happened. The topic came up for discussion over our evening drinks. I asked him and he said, “It is the best thing to have happened to Goa. Mining would have completely ruined the place. Moreover, since Parrikar has done it, no one can complain. He is always right. I recently met him on the streets.” I had nothing to say.

Long ago, someone had told me that India has only two kinds of engineers – those who went to an IIT and those who wanted to go to an IIT. In the good old days, it must have been a heady experience to have attended one of the IITs when there were only five of them and BHU would stake claim to the sixth slot. Parrikar attended the most coveted Powai institute. It was no big deal for him. He had to return to complete the vows he had taken as a young worker of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. The rest is history.

Parrikar’s demise is painful. He could have done so much more for Goa and for India. But when you actually embrace a Hindu way of life, even the acceptance of the most searing pain comes naturally to you. Parrikar taught us the meaning of that philosophy because he led his life as a detached karmayogi after much too early death of Medha Kotnis, his life partner and mother of their two sons. Both, the woman and her man, have now succumbed to carcinoma. As mere mortals, we must bow before the immense power of ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’. I have seen it up close very recently and there can be no contestation about Parrikar’s going. He did more than he could have.

A swayamsewak lives for Ma Bharati and unflinchingly performs any task he is assigned. Parrikar did just that, but he made a real difference to India at possibly the most crucial time in the nation’s march to glory. Love for the Motherland makes you a fearless decision-maker. Parrikar displayed that fearlessness when he identified pretty early the fellow Sangh traveller who would best serve Ma Bharati. In ways more than one, Narendra Modi was Parrikar’s formal choice as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in 2013. The rest, once again, is history. The nation will always thank the Mapusa boy for making that happen.

We would never know, but my guess is that the pain of cancer must have started getting on to Parrikar in September 2016. That was when as the nation’s Raksha Mantri, he was often closeted in the war room with his best friend, Modi, to execute the first surgical strikes against the Pakistan-based marauders. I feel his training as a member of the RSS must have kept Parrikar going in the face of excruciating pain.

He had to go so he did. No issues, ‘RM Sahab’. I am addressing you so for a simple reason. When you hung up your boots as RM, a senior Army officer had told me: “Antony’s eyes would look either at the ceiling or on the floor. Parrikar was different. He would straight look into you.” Well, the word, they say, is commitment.

अजय्यां च विश्वस्य देहीश शक्तिम्

सुशीलं जगद् येन नम्रं भवेत्

श्रुतं चैव यत् कण्टकाकीर्णमार्गम्

स्वयं स्वीकृतं नः सुगंकारयेत्॥