More than thirty years ago, it was my sense of fun that made me grab the daily Evening News of India in Bombay and turn swiftly to the last page to read Busybee's column. He had a pet boxer called Bolshoi. It was in conversations with his wide-eyed companion, Bolshoi, that he discussed mundane and important issues that either irked or peeved or humoured Bombay society. Bolshoi was the eternal philosopher caught in a 20th century time warp with egalitarian views that astonished everyone, including his owner. Busybee's was undoubtedly the widest read column in all newspapers of the time. When I first met Behram 'Busybee' Contractor, I was shocked. I had expected a gregarious, witty Don Juan with a razor-sharp brain and beady eyes that flicked from one corner to the other so as not to miss a trick while still absorbing the inanity of the conversation around him as he held a leash on a slobbery boxer that could look up from his weathered heels and examine the underpants of social wellbeing. Instead, I saw a diminutive, hunched, shy, bespectacled individual without any flamboyance, tucked quietly in one corner of the room with not a word to say for himself. Next to him was a hideous porcelain cockatoo, painted like a macaw, or perhaps it was the other way around. Given half a choice, I would have picked the gaudy bird and dumped the non-entity in white drill trousers and a cotton bush shirt. Good companion Years later, when Busybee had moved on to become one of the most successful and important newspapermen in India, his nature as a shy and humble human being remained just the same. Busybee died in Mumbai last week. I must have missed his obituary in our local papers and only read a short piece in the city gossip column of the Asian Age on Sunday, preceded by news about Tina Ambani at an auction where Shekhar Suman ditched at the last minute and was replaced by Dolly Thakore. Whenever I sit down to write a cryptic piece that drips with my social frustrations and economic backwardness, I often wonder if life as a writer would be easier if I too had an indulgent and erudite Bolshoi to bounce my nonsense off. But, truthfully, Busy- bee was a guru who was easily understood, but impossible to emulate. A busybody I am. Eccentric, exasperating, fun-loving and bohemian. While I dwell physically in the streets of Calcutta, my soul travels constantly through the mists and valleys of the Garhwal Himalaya. I smell pine needles in Tangra and watch the Alaknanda at Babu Ghat. I look at the Maidan like the uninhabited and carpeted bugiyals at 13,000 feet in Bedni and convert the grazing white flannels of cricketers into herds of Thar and Bharral that stroll across miles of billowing dales. Gut reactions I get a kick out of writing; besides, it pays. My experiences at hacking at one time changed the topography of golf courses and the cosmetic repairs undertaken after every 18 holes I enjoyed, encouraged committees to give me a typewriter to compose their club's newsletters instead. With the commitment of Mahitabel (for those of you who remember that American classic), and the ribaldry of a whore, I took on anyone and everyone and was able to laugh off the experience the morning after. I have, almost never, trod upon sensitive toes, but my gut reaction to anything from politics to the preservation of churches has ruffled enough feathers and inspired latent philanthropists to a point where I can sit back and chuckle and thank god for the opportunity I am given to air my joys and woes in print. It was at Pearl Padamsee's place that I last saw Behram almost a decade ago. He has been a quiet inspiration for writers like me. His inimitable wit and casual innuendos that stirred up debates at the Sea Lounge of the Taj and around the thelas of pau bhaji after most of Bombay was fast asleep, are memories that will never fade. He was a quiet patron of all the arts and loved theatre - he came to every show I was ever in, in Bombay. With the passing of Pearl and Behram, two colours have been robbed off the rainbow that splashed its radiance on the everyday life of Bombay.