It was in late 1989, when I had lost my younger brother in Mumbai that Raju came down to India and pulled me up from my deep solitude and sorrow. He urged me to move out of India to get over the stress and agony that I was going through having lost a very close younger sibling at the prime of his youth at just 31. I was not inclined as I had already had a long overseas stint in my professional career. But he was insistent and said the change would be an elixir for me to regain my elements and also, I could help him in his small practice in the sleepy and leisurely town of Lobatse in Botswana. So, I heeded to his suggestion and moved to Lobatse to join his accounting practice as a partner.
My days in Lobatse and in Southern Africa are still fresh in my memory. The change of atmosphere and the challenge to grow a small practice was very engaging not to speak of the immense travel opportunities in the African continent which I utilised very well. Raju was generous enough not to interfere in whatever I was doing, and I also did not suffocate him with my own views unless asked for. So, our partnership flourished and so too our reputation in the local business community. 
Raju had entrepreneurial skills. He jumped at some of the ideas I had put forward and executed them well even after I had left that country. He did not interfere when I began to experiment with setting up a back-office processing facility way back in 1990 training the native university graduates for accounting work. This business unit grew and was added to the practice of book-keeping and later business analysis for local entrepreneurs. Raju was very good in marketing too and his debt collection techniques were interesting and rewarding.
I recall vividly our long 1000 plus kms trip from Lobatse to the Victoria falls with our families driving through Francistown, then to the Plumtree border into Bulawayo and onto Vic Falls. We also spent time in the woods and tree houses. 
I left that country in 1993, due to personal reasons largely driven by a burglary we had been subjected to and menacing security issues, much to the disappointment of Raju and his wonderful wife Rema.  Raju took care of all my personal matters which I had left behind. I later visited Gaborone and Lobatse in 2001-02 after I had gone to Harare for a meeting. I had a rousing welcome at the Gaborone airport with many of our old friends and Raju himself receiving me at the airport and driving his Lexus through that beautiful 70 kms to the town of Lobatse. I stayed with him at his palatial and tastefully created house that he had built along with several other businesses he had set up in Namibia and across the border in South Africa including an accounting practice in Florida (USA) that were all running successfully. He honestly said that I should return to Lobatse! I promptly returned to New Delhi to continue in the global practice of a big 4 of which I was a senior partner then.
Raju and Rema visited me and my family at our home in Delhi in early 2007 to invite us for his first son’s wedding in Bangalore. We recounted our early days in Fraser & Ross where we both had done our CA. He even drew a quick sketch of one of the partners of that old firm who had certain peculiarities. He was his old self – a child with all his mischievous overtures. Both of them had dinner with us and our conversations continued with laughter late into the night before he returned to the Taj Hotel in New Delhi where he was staying ; myself and my wife promising him again  that we will be in Bangalore a couple of days before the big wedding he was planning for his son.
A few months later – to be precise - on 18th March 2007, I got a call from our common friend in Lobatse that Raju passed away on that day. It was so shocking and unbelievable. He was just 51 years old.  He had a massive heart attack in Francistown and was airlifted to Gaborone. I could not go for his funeral there. I was told that many of the parliamentarians and ministers were at his funeral not to speak of the hundreds of businessmen and the fans he had. 
We attended his son’s wedding in Bangalore – without Raju -. His wife Rema was composed but indeed sad. We too were indeed sad.
Raju is still fresh in my memories and he shall be there for ever. He was a talented, an exuberant and vivacious fellow with a good heart. He would have done much more in life and lifted many people up if only if he had another ten years more.  Inscrutable are the ways of GOD.  I indeed lost a very good friend and an admirer of whatever little I have achieved in my life.   
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