Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan at the launch of his new book 'I do What I do' in Mumbai on Friday. Pic/PTI

Activist-rationalist-journalist Gauri Lankesh was on the Times of India newsdesk in Delhi when I began journalism in 1987 as a local reporter. I remember her sitting in the large, open newsroom at the main desk with two other women, Bhavdeep and Chandrika; all three giggled when, on a Saturday afternoon, I came to office in shorts (an unusual thing then), so I generally avoided them. My spouse joined the TOI desk a year later and knew Gauri better. I did not run into Gauri again after each of us left TOI; she became a committed activist after her father's death and though there was occasion to meet during my four years living in the south, we never did.