He is approaching late fifties and becoming a dotard by the each passing day. He laughs empty laughs and is plagued by formalities; though he is cunning like a fox but that fox has swaddled himself in the body of a bear. He virtually quacks in front of his seniors and rages on the juniors when there is no stress. His food slips through his hands when he is late even a minute for the office lest his boss bang him in front of the colleagues. But he terrorizes his juniors, demands goodies from them in return for easy and trouble free duties. The remote location and nature of their duty makes them weak and they submit to his whims. It is like hugging the bear.

Food occupies a central place in his psyche and his greatest weakness; his eyes continue to ogle the food and he is an ogre. His digestion is legendary. Sweets, fried food, chicken, mutton become humble before his digestive system. Sometimes we were arguing that he can eat stones and drink the food made in crude oil instead of normal vegetable oils. He relishes his food and have no modern day diseases like blood pressure and diabetes or heart conditions. He is as tough as nails. All these characteristics might have been acquired during his struggle for survival in the younger days when he has to leave his country and with his parents tread though jungles. After arriving to get a foothold at a place which was completely alien to him.

Struggle for survival must have made him like that. When the life became easy, he took some liberties with his colleagues. He constructed a big multistory house at his new location with taking any aid from the company. He also bought some land adjacent to his house where he has cultivated some high value trees for selling them at a later date. He grew plenty of vegetables and has a pond dug in his land where he raised the fish for daily consumptions.

I miss him many a times.