It's hard to put into words how much the sudden demise of Prof. Amit Dutta has affected me personally. His loss has rendered all of us numb, and I still prefer to be in denial of the entire incident. Officially, I was his project student, but right from the first day, he made me feel as if I was interacting with an extremely close family member. He always wanted us to treat him like a friend, a colleague, or rather a parent. His smile and jestful nature was infectious, and you couldn't help but burst out in laughter whenever you were around him. His academic brilliance, and excellent teaching abilities need no new introduction, but his kind and loving personality made him the heart of IIT Kanpur. So, in this message, I would prefer to talk about his humanitarian side and his quirks and practices. In fact, when I first decided to have him as a mentor, I really didn't care about his field of research, I wanted HIM and only HIM to be my supervisor, just because of how he was as a person.
He always had some chairs right next to him in his office, and whether it was the weekly meetings or just a random chat, he never wanted us to sit across the table. He always made us sit right beside him, and he would pat on our backs while speaking. Many a times, he made me sit in his own chair, while he would sit on the opposite side, or explain stuff on the board. Quite often, he used to play old Bengali songs, and asked me to identify their singers if it was Kishore Kumar or Hemanta Mukherjee or RD Burman, and when I failed to give the correct answer sometimes, he used to jokingly call me 'The posh British'. He always had some nicknames for each of us, and even in serious situations, he was the one to lift us out of darkness. These little things about him made me idolise him as a physicist and as a person. In the rather short span of my acquaintance with him, I can safely say that he was like my guardian, and he knew certain secrets which even my parents didn't know. Being from his hometown in Kolkata, I was already aware of how he cared for the underprivileged society, and how much he was involved in multiple charity works at Dakshineshwar Temple in Kolkata. Even here at IITK, when I used to sit at his office, I had seen him interact with the support staff, and not only did he know each of them by their names, but was also very caring about their families. His absence has left a void in the Physics department which will take a rather long time to recover.
The day before that fateful accident, I met him on the road quite randomly, and he quickly invited me over for tea and a walk. We talked for over an hour on various topics, starting from Quantum Dynamics, to the new series on Netflix, and the transition of Bollywood music from Kishore Kumar to 'Besharam Rang', and the new Avatar film. And at the end, he patted us on our head urging us to work hard for our last semester, and warned us to stay indoors during the ongoing cold wave. Never had I imagined, that it would be our last meeting. I pray for his soul to have a peaceful ascent to heaven, and stay in an eternal bliss for the rest of time. I miss you, Sir.
