Dear Colleagues,

Most of the obituary remarks shared on the Indology list have been composed by scholars who have known Prof. Bronkhorst personally over the years. As someone who never had the opportunity to meet him in person but was nonetheless tremendously impacted by his kind advice, I would like to tell my story.

I arrived at the University of Bologna in Italy a few decades ago as a postdoctoral scholar at Umberto Eco's invitation. I was asked by Eco to work on Ānandavardhana's Dhvanyāloka. Given my limited proficiency in Italian at the time and Eco's inexperience with Sanskrit poetics, we decided to put off our project until later, ideally with the assistance of a Sanskrit poetics expert.

I thus sent Prof. Bronkhorst an email asking if he would be interested in being involved in our study or if he could at least offer me some guidance. About two weeks later, I was astonished to receive a two-page letter that was exquisitely penned (I guess he was allergic to emails). Maybe since he was getting close to retirement age, he suggested that I relocate to the US or Canada instead, naming a few locations that I don't want to reveal now. His kind guidance had a big impact on me, really!

The most unexpected act of his generosity, however, was his second letter, which was exquisitely calligraphed and arrived two months later. In it, he inquisitively asked how I was doing thus far. No matter what you do, you'll agree that such actions have a lasting effect on one’s life.

Regretfully, the city of Doges, the Italian dolce vita, the adjacent magnificent Italian Alps, and my Italian family members, all stood in the way of my future scholastic endeavors across the Atlantic. Furthermore, I would rather not leave the certainty of my life in Europe for the uncertainty of starting a new life across the Atlantic, which has kept me in Europe for many decades.

Bronkhorst was a lovely soul, really!

Ghanshyam Sharma

INALCO, Paris, France