India, Jan. 10 -- At 98 years of age, memory does not arrive in a rush. It walks in quietly, takes a seat, and waits to be acknowledged.

Satya Pal Sethi, the oldest living alumnus of Delhi's Shri Ram College of Commerce, has learnt not to hurry it either. The college he entered as a young man in the late 1940s has turned 100 this year. He has almost matched it, year for year, step for step.

"I still see the college canteen in my dreams," he says, his gaze drifting past the camera. "Bas mere jitne friends the, un sab ki death ho chuki hai. I am perhaps the only one left." He states it without drama, almost clinically. And yet, in that instant, the room fills with a quiet awe. Not of loss alone, but of the gravity of a life that has endur...