OBITUARY: Remembering Tirthankar Chattopadhyay, 1942–2024

Tirthankar Chattopadhyay passed away on 23 June 2024 in Kolkata, at the age of 81. He had been suffering from cancer in his last years. I was one of his close friends for the last six decades and his comrade in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for almost five. This closeness makes it difficult for me to put into words what his loss signifies for our generation as separate from my personal sense of loss. But it is all the more necessary to make this attempt while his memory is still raw.