A Small Thank You Note to Late Dubby Bhagat

Late Dubby Bhagat used to write for The Himalayan Times

Growing up in Kathmandu, and being admitted to an residential English medium school meant that a lot of emphasis was put on learning and writing in English and not much on Nepali. Our then Head of House, Late D.D.Dewan, used to drill this very same notion into our heads "eat, drink, sleep in english." Being a careful target of his donkey stick for so long, I had no choice but to succumb to such monumental pressures and here I am, completely unable to construct a proper sentence in Nepali.

Having The Himalayan Times, the English national daily, arrive at my home's footsteps didn't actually help that either. The first thing I did every morning was to wake up, head downstairs, clean up the saliva mess that my dog had so forth volunteer-ly placed on the newspaper, bring it up, close the bathroom door and while busy doing my usual morning routine business, would read every single news there was to read.

But among all of these, were my two favorite columns; Dubby's DVDiscussion, where the columnist, now late Dubby Bhagat, wrote about his frank, crisply written, no-bullshit take on movies while writing a food column called "The Movable Feast." Subconsciously, Dubby's writing style and the way he portrayed food in writing must have had a significant impact because all I can think of doing right now, besides the research work I do, is to write about food, more food and more food.

His demise on July 20, at the age of 73, has made me feel a little uncomfortable. It's a weird concept; a person you hardly meet or see and only know him through his words can induce such feelings of sadness. At that age, with his health failing him, I guess it was for the best.

Thank you, Dubby, for helping that kid grow to love food and to love to write about food. Many people do the former but seldom end up doing the latter, so cheers to that.

RIP my columnist imaginary, but not-so-imaginary, friend.