Derek Brown,gregarious foreign correspondent,passes away

“He was to my mind an ideal foreign correspondent. An image comes to your mind — a typical British correspondent in a Graham Greene — and you conjure up an image of someone who is in an exotic place,” old friend and neighbour Satish Jacob said.

It is the image of him smiling in his house,a glass in hand,that Jacob,who worked at the BBC office next door,can’t get off his mind.

Brown was a founder member of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Delhi (FCC) in 1990-91.

Back in the days when they set up the FCC,there were complaints of mysterious happenings in the night — of glasses clanging,pots and pans smashing. Journalist Ajoy Bose,who worked with Brown,recalled how the manager suggested a havan. The ghosts,the manager said,had taken over the FCC and nothing less than a ritual with an army of priests chanting mantras could oust the evil forces.

Derek,with another foreign correspondent,sat in front of the sacred fire,his face flushed while the priests chanted the mantras. “They still have that picture of two white men with their flushed faces and the havan… Derek said ‘Why not. Let’s do it.’ He was like that. Always ready,” Bose said.

Yet another friend wrote on a Facebook page of tributes to Derek: “Who can forget — who was there at the time — the puja to cast out ghosts at the Delhi FCC? (The bumps in the night turned out to be a larcenous employee). Bless you,Derek,wherever you are,and thank you for your goodness.”

An obituary in The Guardian has its former editor,Peter Preston,a man who Derek respected,writing “Derek Brown was (and will always remain in the memory of those who knew him) a brilliant journalist. Derek,rotund,almost unfailingly good humoured,utterly professional whenever deadlines had to be met,was cherished because of what he was as well as because of what he wrote.”

Another colleague from Financial Times,David Housego,who knew Derek for a long time,said the man had great honesty.

Derek and his wife Eileen had no children. Friends still swear by the lovely evenings they spent at the couple’s Delhi house. Long after they moved out,the house at 10 Nizamuddin East still exists in their memory. “I remember very much going to his house. I remember his great sense of humour and bottles being opened. And he was such a warm and generous host,” Housego said.

One of the posts on Derek’s columns on the RIP page of social networking site Facebook said he belonged to a vanishing breed of journalists — honest and with “humane curiosity.”