On November 30, I was working on Departures, the final chapter of my new book. The light in Delhi’s evening sky was growing weak. I wondered if it was stitching a dark fog coat to settle on tree-tops in Lodhi gardens. It looked like the winter routine of gloom. As things were not exactly falling into place on the page, I decided to take a break from writing. I lay down on the bed and picked up my phone to check messages that had dropped in while I was away.

I saw Derek’s message and opened it instantly. It felt like a telegram, which in the pre-internet age, at least in India, was most often deployed to swiftly transport dark messages about dear ones. Derek’s message was telegraphic but did not have the staccato template of a telegram. It was somewhat a compression of pain with a consolatory acknowledgement of life: “Sad news here. Jerry passed away a short while ago. It was peaceful and he was asleep when he left us. A very special and lovely man.”

Jeremy Seabrook, my teacher, loving mentor, towering intellectual and British author, born in distant 1939, had moved on, but his physical form was to stay with us...