Bibek Debroy: Economist, writer, mentor, polymath

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Bibek Debroy. He was a man whose formidable scholarship ranged from economics and Sanskrit literature to the history of Indian-made fountain pens. He wrote and lectured on these diverse subjects, and many readers will have been enriched by them over the years.

He will be truly missed by his colleagues at Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), his many friends and fans across the world, and by his family.
For me, the loss is very personal. Almost every morning, after the first official meeting of the day, sometime between 11 and 11.15 am, I would walk over to Bibek-da's office down the corridor.

Occasionally, he would come to my room. We would then order a cup of coffee each; his spartan black, mine strong and sugary. The conversation over the next 20-odd minutes would traverse the most eclectic combination of topics-latest developments in international politics, economic reforms, macro-stability, outdated laws and processes, ancient history, the dating of Vedic texts, upcoming EAC-PM reports, and the office gossip of the finance ministry of the 1990s.

It was quite incredible how he remembered certain things in vivid detail.

For instance, if I was working on a certain process reform, he would remember the exact sub-section of an old regulation that I needed to study. At other times, he would mention the exact date of some meeting that took place in the Planning Commission 30 years ago or ask me look up an obscure state government report published in the 1980s. All this, even as he made me test out his latest fountain pen acquisition or redo the wording of some article we were writing.