I  never got to say goodbye to him 😞. And, I’ll never forget the day Noel and I walked into a senior class just to listen to him do his thing. The long lectures by prof Frans Manjali were the beginning of my engagement with language and sign/ structure/ philosophy/ poststructuralism/ culture etc. My batch got to do “semiotics and conceptual structures”, “poststructuralism” and “language and cultural studies” with him. I was perhaps too naïve then, mostly still am, but it was a formative period of learning and I must say many of the ideas discussed then continue to inRuence the way I think and engage with general scholarship today. I remember the one time I told him that I was learning more outside the class (students politics) than inside it, and he said, “perhaps, it should be the other way around” 😂 Thinking about it now, I think he was both right and wrong 😊

Going back to JNU to work with prof Bilimale allowed me to witness another side of him as the Kannada Chair o ce was right in front of his o ce. His biggest critique of me came through Bilimale Sir. I, according to him, was a decent student, but needed to focus more. I did try to take the advice seriously. During another rare instance, when passing by, he introduced me to prof Janaki Nair and said, “he is like you” (in the sense that we are both Malayali and Kannadiga); and it took me by surprise. We had never spoken in Malayalam and I didn’t know he knew that something about me. Whether anyone (students) got to know him closely or not, I don’t think there is ever a finished conversation with a thinker like him. But, I always thought I was going to meet him again, properly, to have a proper conversation. That, unfortunately, didn’t happen. I would, however, like to leave what I remember of you here, Franson Sir 💐

Dua