India, Feb. 9 -- Last Sunday, a WhatsApp message from senior poet-academician Satya Pal Sehgal read: "The heart breaks down: There was a poet called Kumar Vikal because there was a Sudarshana Devi." And one is 19 again, fresh out of college in the journalism department, looking in awe at a tall, well-built, giant of a man his lips stained with the red of the paan and pockmarks sitting comfortably on his handsome face and flaying hair as he went around the campus often pillion-riding on some friend's two-wheeler and calling out tipsy greetings to the renowned professors, including formidable Tara Chand Gupta who taught us reporting and feature writing, in a no-nonsense way. Besides, he had many young friends from the journalism and art fra...