Kiran Nagarkar was visiting a friend when he collapsed. Something in his brain whispered, 'Enough' and a massive haemorrhage ensued. He lay in a coma for two days. About an hour ago, I got a message from my friend Naresh Fernandes, 'Kiran passed on'.

I first met Kiran Nagarkar in Raavan and Eddie, a book that immediately resonated with me. I loved it because it was about the chawls of Bombay, it was about Afghan Snow which I had seen on the dressing tables of so many of my aunties, it was affectionate about Roman Catholics and I had had it up to there with the way Hindi cinema had turned my community into drunkards and sluts. I loved Manjula Padmanabhan's magnificent cover and I loved the sheer unexpected Rabelaisianness of it.
I met him later and we became friends. How could he not like me? I was in love with his book. I told him it was the book I had planned to write and he signed my hardback with a reassuring invitation to the book-writing game; that he was waiting for my book, that it would be a Bombay book too, and that there was room for another.