By Amit Roy
IT IS now four years since Lord Gulam Noon passed away. He was a close friend whose number I have still not deleted from my phone, nor that of Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, chairman of the Warwick Manufacturing Group.
Those gone include friends, colleagues and others I got to know well through work. At the Indian Journalists’ Association, we lost Manab Majumdar, Daljit Sehbai and Batuk Gathani. The in memoriam column is a long one – in no particular order, they include Mala Sen (who wrote Bandit Queen); Dev Anand; Jagmohan Mundhra; the Nawab of Pataudi; Manubhai Madhvani; Paul Bhattacharjee; Lord Richard Attenborough; BKS Iyengar; Dicky Rutnagur; Khushwant Singh; Suchitra Sen; Richie Benaud (admired only from afar); MF Husain; Saeed Jaffrey; Alyque Padamasee; VS Naipaul; and Mahendra Kaul. And, in many cases, the elderly parents back in India and Pakistan (and in this country, too) of friends who are UK residents.
What was especially life-affirming was a question-and-answer session with Bollywood actress Manisha Koirala, who spoke in moving terms about her battle with cancer at the JLF session in the British Library. I bought a copy of her book, Healed: How Cancer gave me a new life. I loved her in the film, Bombay.
Samira Ahmed
Sangita Myska 
Ritula Shah 
Rushanara Ali
Suella Braverman
Baroness Pola Uddin
Priti Patel
And ,the plaque honouring those who fought in the Battle of Kohima
