The loss of an uber cool boss, P K Bharadwaj Pramod Kumar Bhardwaj

SOMA BASU, sr journalist

He was my first boss in The Hindu Delhi in the early nineties. I lost touch with him over the years but last year he surprised me with a message enquiring about my well-being and my ailing father. “Whenever you need help, please give me a tinkle”, he wrote to me last on 29th July 2023.
This was so him, always ready to help.

It is difficult to describe a person like PKB who perhaps shared a love-hate relationship with people.
As the Chief Reporter, he led the team of city reporters with an uncanny gusto. He had a way of getting things done. His unflappable calm, his way with words and style of conversation would make an order sound like an appeal or request, which we could not refuse.
A hardcore reporter who knew the city like the back of his palm, he guided us young reporters and we slogged it out under him, chasing stories and never missing assignments at odd hours and places in heat and cold. There were grudges and resentment, flaws and fights, good and bad days; and he would hunt us down till we returned from the venue to file our stories or filed the last press release or every crime snippet every single day. In his own way probably, he trained his juniors to take on every assignment, challenging or easy, boring or interesting with the same zeal.

The best thing about Chief was that he was the same person inside out, no matter with whom and where he was — the HOD in office, a friend with help, a journo meeting a politician or a commoner, or a stranger on the street. There were no two ways about him. He was just him. Always. Cracking the whip or the silliest of jokes, being goofy to embarrassing to entertaining; never ever hesitating to show his true self or the real side of him to friends, foes and even random people.
He mastered the art of befriending people in the most craziest of ways. He had a fetish to bum cigarettes, loved his drinks, more when others bought him. He was open about whatever he did or said and could take any amount of criticism with a cheeky smile. He could laugh at himself and make you laugh with his native sense of humour, even when you were fuming. He was a character unto himself with quite a reputation!
On Tuesday (February 7) as he lay still at the Nigambodh Ghat, all friends and former colleagues were full of stories about him and their association with him. Everybody remembered with a smile his good, harmless and helpful nature, no matter what.
But unfortunately, he left all of a sudden, a cardiac arrest apparently that gave him no time to seek help.
Grief is natural but it is best to remember and celebrate the jolly good PKB, who leaves behind sack full of funny memories. Hope his wife Meera Meera Bhardwaj and daughter Priyanka find the strength to keep going with the happy memories of their loved one.

Go well Chief!

With Marydasan John Anita Joshua Aarti Dhar Sudha Vemuri Sandeep Dikshit Vinay Kumar Atul Aneja Hassan Suroor Sushma Ramachandran Ashwini Phadnis Sunderarajan Padmanabhan B.muralidhar Reddy Rakesh Rao Vijay Lokapally Kamesh Srinivasan Shanker Chakravarty Rajesh Ahuja Madhusudan Srinivas Maitreyee Saha Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi Subbu Srinivasan Gaurav Bhatnagar Alladi Jayasri Lakshman Iyer Srinivasan Ramanujam Rakesh Bhatnagar Hemlata Thapa Shiv Kumar Pushpakar Sujay Mehdudia

Harish Khare, Ashok Kalkur, Gargi Parsai, Neena Vyas, Y P Narula, Sivadas, Prafulla Das, V V Krishnan, N Sudershan Pankaj Vohra Subrata Taluk