In memory
For Raj Mamaji
My uncle, Raj Kumar, my mum’s brother. We lost him this year, and I was glad I could be there to say goodbye.
Raj Mamaji in uniform, beside his Ambassador. His early days in the Indian Police Service, which he joined in 1974. In 1977 he sat one of the toughest exams in the world and entered the Indian Administrative Service, ranked in the country’s top ten with a gold medal. The Ambassador was built from the tooling of the Morris Oxford Series III, which BMC sold to India in 1956, and it stayed in production, barely altered, until 2014. For decades it was the car the government drove.
Raj Mamaji with me as a boy, a little one on his arm. Sharp as anything and good company with it, never the nerd you’d expect. He rose to Chief Secretary to the Government of Haryana, and Financial Commissioner and Principal Secretary across the state’s biggest departments.
Every inch the officer, cap, cane and all. In full uniform at the family gate, the Ambassador behind him. Retired IAS, 1977 Haryana cadre. A remarkable man, and family.