Sachin Chaudhuri

It was in 1960, as a student in the Bombay School of Economics, I barged into the small office of the Economic Weekly (EW). The late Sachin Chaudhuri, chewing pan and dressed in starched kurta and dhoti, with thick glasses, smilingly looked at me and asked, “what is the matter?” “Sir, I have written this article on ‘Air Transport since Nationalisation’; please publish it”. He took it, not even glancing at it, and asked me to sit. He then pulled out a publication of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Fishing in Maharashtra and Hong Kong. “You take this, go back, write a review of it in three pages and bring it back quickly”. I was nervous, did not even dare to ask him whether he would publish my air transport article, and quietly left, saying, “Yes, Sir”.

At that time my teachers at the Bombay School of Economics were D T Lakdawala, M L Dantwala, P R Brahmananda, Vijay Shankar Vyas, and Hannan Ezekiel, who taught transport economics and was a regular contributor to EW. In those days, EW was like a Bible for economics students and writing even a small letter to the editor was considered an academic achievement. I did not dare tell out of fear, any of my teachers or my classmates that I went to “Sachin Sir” and gave him an article to publish!