Over Time, Without Drift

Some friendships announce themselves early; others reveal their depth only with time. My friendship with V. Achuthan belonged to the latter kind. We met in 1979 at the Madras School of Social Work as postgraduate students, and remained friends—steadily, quietly, and without interruption—for nearly four decades, until his death in 2018.

Each of us was free to grow in his own direction without drifting apart. Achuthan stepped away from the academic path and became a lawyer, practising at the Madras High Court. I moved into research, working as a Research Associate with Professor Nair at the Development Resources Centre. Our lives took different forms, yet the friendship did not thin or strain. If there was a common thread, it lay not in shared careers but in shared regard—for Professor Nair, and for a way of thinking that valued integrity, independence, and a quiet seriousness of purpose.

What sustained the friendship, I now see, was this shared formation rather than shared circumstance. Professor Nair was central to it—not as a mentor we followed in identical ways, but as a presence who shaped how we thought about work, responsibility, and the conduct of one’s life. Each of us absorbed that influence differently. Achuthan carried it into the discipline of law and the daily rigour of practice; I carried it into research and inquiry. The outward paths diverged, but the inward orientation remained recognisably aligned.

This triangularity, if I may call it that, later became a quiet backbone of support at a moment when it mattered most. Although Professor Nair was an academician of distinction, the long-awaited additional leadership responsibility as Director of the Madras School of Social Work—both demanding and prestigious—was effectively obstructed by the continued occupation of the position beyond its legitimate term. What should have been a matter of orderly transition turned into a period of institutional strain, testing patience, process, and principle. In that time, the shared formation we had absorbed earlier—respect for integrity, due process, and moral seriousness—found practical expression through steadfast support, including recourse to lawful confrontation.

That moment came early in our friendship, before time had done its usual work of settling and softening bonds. Yet it revealed, with unexpected clarity, the kind of friendship it was to become. It is only in hindsight that I see how decisive that period was. What followed over the next four decades did not so much alter its character as extend it—quietly, faithfully—until Achuthan’s death in 2018. |