Few days back, Debjeet Sarangi, a much loved son of the soil who touched many lives in India, transitioned.

I remember being struck by this man who chose to work in an open mine as a daily wage laborer for a year just because he wanted to understand the plight of the miners.

Below is an expression in memory of him, written by his good friend Kavita Kuruganti. It has been mildly edited for brevity.

There are so many things that one wants to say - to say to dear Debjeet in fact, which is not possible any more. Say about Debjeet is what I will try now. About my memories, my feelings and my views/thoughts about Debjeet, the person and his work, including Living Farms.

As many of you know by now, he succumbed to covid-19 on 15th of May (at just 53 years of age), and it is reported that he died of cardiac arrest after being on a ventilator for many days. There were several people in the state of Odisha and elsewhere who ran around to bring medicines or do other things, over the last fortnight, to somehow help Debjeet survive. But that was not to be, unfortunately.

I have known Debjeet for about 18 years, from 2004. And have kept discovering and re-discovering him over the years. In a memorial meeting this morning, I discovered new facets to him that I had not known before, for instance. He seems to have had several surprises tucked away in what he was.

In all these years, one did not ever have to think about Debjeet's formal education - it never mattered. He was reading and quoting from many different kinds of books. He was well-versed with discourse and practice of many sectors of the development world - adivasi (indigenous people) rights, women's rights, health and nutrition, organic farming, forestry, ethno-architecture, yoga and ayurveda......

What one can say about him is that he was "self-made". When he had to leave an non-profit where he was working to start his own work, with Ardhendu Chatterjee as his guru , and later as a separate entity called Living Farms, he faced many active obstacles placed in his way.

He and I began working together in 2004 against the onslaught of GM crops and foods in India. And I must say that a fair amount of credit for the Odisha state government's policies on GMOs goes to Debjeet Sarangi.

When he approached me to join the Board of Trustees of Living Farms at inception, I considered it my privilege to do so and stayed on till 2020. And what a learning experience it was!

Over the years, his work and Living Farms' work turned out to be pioneering, and gave me immense opportunities to get a peep into new worldviews, new perspectives and new ethos.

What followed was the building of an organisation that became a source of inspiration and support to many people - this includes civil society activists, grassroots workers, researchers, students, film makers, government bureacrats, philanthropists, donor organisations, artists, writers, media representatives and several others.

Through Living Farms, he established some very creative and innovative interventions, with the right perspectives and that too at scale, with measured noteworthy impacts! And the work was deeply political, by-itself-structure-altering kind.

Indigenous Communities' Self Determination, Forest Rights, Food Sovereignty, Seed Sovereignty, Plurality of Knowledge Systems, Local Autonomy, Gender Equality, Communitarian Ethos, Circular Local 'Economies', Community Education and Healthcare, Community Ownership and Control over Natural Resources and so on - in effect, Swaraj. Debjeet's work encompassed all of these.

This meant creating an organisation that did not have staff members carrying a "know-all" attitude and approach into their work. This meant creating an organisation that had a diverse mix of local people from the Kondh community and "professionals from outside". This also meant sometimes, using modern science and knowledge to understand and explore the local practices and wisdom, to support the same.

Debjeet's dream project was around adivasi (indegenous) youth re-discovering their communities' strength and skills, and collectivising themselves, through the Green College.

While that was all about Living Farms' work led by the vision that Debjeet held, I need to share with the world a few things about Debjeet himself.

The best-fitting description that I can think of is that he was a "mindful being" always - a very humble, gentle, compassionate, generous and sensitive visionary. No harsh words. Gentle humour. A certain perplexed concern when he encountered negative behaviour.

He might be amongst those rare non-profit chief functionaries, who opted for a lower salary than the 'second line' functionaries in the organisation when required. A rare person who chose to hand over the Board functions and powers trustingly and willingly to a whole set of non-founders, so that he can take up an executive role. Someone who found ways of weaving in support, even as he and Living Farms drew from them, for researchers, writers and activists across India. Someone who sought and got support and companionship from several inspirational personalities of India

In Muniguda where he spent most of his time in the past several years, if you come down from the guest room early in the mornings, you would find Debjeet playing softly some hindustani music already at work at 5.30am. He would insist on accompanying me to the Muniguda railway station each time I had to catch a train, at the unearthly hour of 2.45am. And he is one of those rare men in my world, who would check whether I have reached my destination safely (not that I needed that, but this is just to say that he was sensitive and conscious about the lack of safety for women - or may be he did this to everyone?).

Very often, we tend to forget to mention/recognise the support and contribution of the spouse. Jyoti and he were colleagues in a non-profit before they got married. She is sensitive and supportive, and also skilled and knowledgeable in the world that Debjeet straddled. She would often help in prompt translation of material into the local language.

There are several unfulfilled dreams of Debjeet that one is reminded of. And may be I am not even mentioning them adequately here. Rebuilding and reviving the vernacular. About liberating children of indigenous communities from an education system that is alienating and humiliating them towards their own society. About reviving barter markets in the area, but one that is attuned to nutrition - "barter for nutrition", a kind of bridge between tallia (foothill) kondhs and Dongrias. About adivasi youth finding their own agency and voice. About Green College. About reviving traditional housing ethos and style of the kondhs. About documentation of local folklores. Here is an appeal for the Green College.

I am deeply grateful to Debjeet for the privilege he provided me to be a small part of his life's journey, for the wonderful and warm care he extended during and beyond the several Muniguda and Bhubaneswar visits, for his gentle teaching and orientation of folks like me to newer worlds, and for the mindful and meaningful life he lived. He went away too young and too early.

I hope that many people would come together to fulfill his unfinished dreams, to carry forward his vision. I say this along with a humble acknowledgement that this is greatly more challenging now, in his absence. But attempt, we must.

Go onward gently, as you would, Debjeet.