THE DEPARTED: Personalities who left us in 2019

- A master strategist, the voice of reason, a superior communicator and a thought leader, Arun Jaitley was the only one who remained indispensible for the BJP, whether the party was under Lal Krishna Advani or Narendra Modi-Amit Shah. - Her final stint was as Union minister of external affairs - a role she redefined while using social media not merely as a medium for outreach but as an effective response mechanism. - Months before his death, 10 clerics reached the BJP headquarters to read the Quran for him and Goa's archbishop Filipe Neri Ferao appealed to the Catholic community to pray for him. - His arrest in the Baroda Dynamite case in 1976 and his photograph, showing him as lifting his handcuffed fist in defiance while being led away by the police, became one of the most powerful images of the Emergency era. - Apart from his inflexible choice of sitting in the front seat of the car and in the economy section of an aircraft, an abiding image is that of Fernandes insisting on washing his clothes himself. Pitiless with himself, Reddy declined a scholarship at Hyderabad's Nizam College (where he had his political baptism as a student leader) on a physical disability quota. - A true liberal, Reddy rose as a student leader from Osmania University to make it to national politics, where he remained Union minister in the 10 years of UPA I and II. - As the ubiquitous spokesperson of parties during the United Front days, Reddy was known for throwing in Harold Laski, Bertrand Russell and Bernard Shaw during his press interactions. - It was entirely because of Deveshwar that ITC's distribution network extends to nearly four million outlets directly or indirectly, which became a launching pad for several subsequent business expansions. - A veteran composer known for his matchless combination of masterly musical engineering and profound expressivity, Mohammed Zahur Khayyam Hashmi could create rhapsodic romantic fervor with mere words.