Opinion Meghnad Desai, Swraj Paul owed much to India — and India owes them a lot

Desai, born in Gujarat in 1940, made his name by defying orthodoxy. Yet what lingers in my mind is not this reputation but a single, small gesture. My father once refused me something, time or money, I cannot recall, but the sting remains. Half in jest, half in dismissal, he told me to curb my shopping. Desai, without hesitation, pulled out his credit card. “Go buy whatever you need,” he said.

I declined. But the gesture never left me. It was not about money. It was about recognition. About being seen when another had turned away. That is the Desai I carry with me.

Paul’s life, too, is well chronicled. Born in Jalandhar in 1931, he travelled to London seeking treatment for his daughter Ambika, only to lose her. A captain of industry, he poured wealth into philanthropy and education through the Ambika Paul Foundation.

Yet my memory is of a modest box of chocolates from the House of Lords and a stationery set he gave me when I was leaving for university. By his standards, trivial gifts. But they were infused with thought. They told a nervous student: You are remembered. And then there was Aruna auntie, his wife, who let no one but me wreak havoc with her favourite lipsticks. In that small act of trust was intimacy, not pomp.

These may be anecdotes, but they also offer a moment to reflect on what we owe the people we lose. They show how legacy is built not only on institutions and donations, but on gestures of recognition. And they remind us that the diaspora’s contributions are not confined to remittances or philanthropy. They include something subtler: The assurance that Indians abroad remain tethered to the emotional fabric of the country they left behind.

India has long mourned “brain drain”. Bright students leave for universities abroad. Professionals build careers in other lands. The grievance is real. But to dwell only on loss is to ignore the gratitude owed. These migrants carried India with them in their education, their upbringing, their moral compass. And in turn, they gave back not only through philanthropy and ideas, but by making India visible on the world stage.

Debt and gratitude are not opposites. They are twins. Desai was shaped by Gujarat and Bombay University before he rose to global stature. Paul carried the wounds and values of Jalandhar with him into London boardrooms. They paid back their society, reflecting old but cherished values. India, in turn, owes them recognition and the subtler gift of memory and presence.

We live in an age fluent in grievance. But to obsess only over what India lost to migration is to miss what it gained. That is why these personal stories matter. Memory is built not only from towering achievements but from small, precise gestures that outlast them.

When obituaries spoke of their brilliance, I remembered the men who saw me neither as my father’s daughter nor a social label, but as myself. That recognition, so rarely offered even by those closest to us, was a gift. Why do we wait until funerals to offer such gratitude?

This is a plea to hold both grievance and gratitude together. To acknowledge and say, yes, you gave us something precious. In private life, that means admitting our parents, mentors, companions wounded us even as they handed us the tools to endure. In national life, it means admitting the diaspora left, but also that they never entirely left us.

We are too quick to close the book on relationships. Love is not a ledger; neither is legacy. There are moments of exhilaration and disappointment. Perhaps maturity, for a person and a nation, lies in holding these paradoxes; erasing neither.

And perhaps the measure of that maturity lies in how we repay the debt. We should sustain institutions, expand scholarships, and teach their examples of courage. Society can honour gratitude not by commemoration alone, but by building on the values they left behind.

Desai and Paul were good to some, difficult to others. But is that not true of us all? What we really leave behind are gestures, contradictions, fragments of recognition. That is the currency of legacy.

In losing them, I have come to see grief differently. It is not only about mourning what is gone. It is about finally noticing what was always there. The small acts, the paradoxes, the love distorted but still tethered. That is where debt and gratitude meet. And that, perhaps, is the truest farewell we can offer.

The writer is an advocate, Supreme Court