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As a person who has rarely shied away from writing lengthy despatches about transparency and accountability in governance, probably causing much boredom even for interested readers, I am suddenly at a loss for words to pay a fitting tribute to my teacher Shreen F. Ratnagar. She was professor of Archaeology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi and a world-renowned expert on the Harappan and Mesopotamian civilisations. 

After bravely putting up a fight against a life-threatening illness, which was unfortunately detected at an advanced stage, she passed away this May 25, at the young age of 81. Barely a day before, I had spoken to M.S. Ganesh, senior advocate at the Supreme Court and my mentor on matters of law, interpretation of statutes and advocacy for human rights, who was by her side during her final hours. I was hoping against hope that she would recover. Little did I expect that the end would come so soon.

Sprinting towards the milestone of senior citizen-hood, I have begun wondering, of late, how more women than men have moulded and influenced my life, personality and career. As a child my parents often said to me- “varna maatra kalisidaatam, guru” which means even if you learnt just one letter of the alphabet from a person, he is your teacher.

“Shereen ma’am” as we fondly called her, is one of those who taught me to think and analyse critically, a faculty that I believe has served me well even after I quit academia to pursue an activist’s career in the public sphere.

This tribute will not be a summation of her rich and erudite contributions to shaping our understanding of ancient India. That onerous task I leave respectfully to experts in the field because I have remained out of touch with that discipline for almost three decades now. This is more of a personal account of the immense debt of gratitude that I owe to Shereen ma’am.

It was early 1989. I was on the threshold of earning my graduate degree in the humanities from Bangalore University. Another noted archaeologist S. R. Rao (whom I met fortuitously during a visit to Lothal for completing an under-graduate project along with my class fellow Shahid Khan and was given a guided tour of the important Harrapan site that he had excavated during the late 1950s) advised me to take up the JNU entrance exam if I wanted to do something worthwhile with my life.

After touring with his team in Poondi, Tamil Nadu, picking up palaeolithic tools that lay by the side of rivulets, I wrote the entrance exam for the subject of ancient history. How I got selected in the very first attempt is a mystery to me even today. Our under-graduate syllabus was so outdated, I was not even aware of the names of scholars like Shereen ma’am and several of her illustrious colleagues whom I would eventually study with at JNU’s Centre of Historical Studies (CHS).

Come July, I made my first trip ever, outside Karnataka, with my father and took admission at CHS. Even though the monsoon semester had commenced, classes had not yet begun. Barely 20 years old, I was all alone in my twin-sharing hostel room for about a week under the sweltering summer of Delhi, eating hostel food which was so alien to my palate that I dreaded the thought of going through the next meal.

In less than 48 hours, homesickness set in. I was frantically writing letters to my parents every day begging to return home at any cost. I thought, I would pursue post-graduate studies in history at some university in Karnataka itself. 

Thankfully, my folks alerted my paternal cousin sister’s family, also living in Delhi, about my predicament. They did their best to offer comfort and solace but I was quite determined to return home. Then, CHS announced the schedule of classes for that semester.

Reluctantly, I decided to attend the first one, promising myself to go to the railway station that very evening to book my return ticket (those were the days before there was public access to internet booking). The first class of the semester was from the compulsory course Ancient........

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