Somewhere in the shadows, in the long creases of light, in the darkness of night, in the noise of the crowd and the silence of sound, death lingers, stalking us all. It shapes our past, inhabits our present and impacts the future we plan. Yet we live as though it were absent, until it arrives with the only certainty that life has ever promised.These meditative reflections arise from a death that was violent in its suddenness. A journalist colleague lost his life in a road accident, leaving the sporting fraternity grappling not only with grief but with questions that death has always provoked.Does life possess an inherent meaning or purpose, or is it merely a succession of random episodes that memory and imagination weave into a narrative with a beginning, middle and an end? These reflections are not an attempt to inhabit that unsettling space where loss strips away certainty and compels us to confront the deepest questions about our own existence.I do not intend, for the moment, to pursue this larger philosophical question. Instead, I want to remember Jassi as he was for many of us: a man of considerable strength and unmistakable weaknesses, whose life, like that of most of us, defied easy judgment. Jasvinder Sidhu had a rebellious streak which many in the establishment mistook for mischievous irreverence, seeing in it not an independent spirit but a threat to their own authority.I first met him on India’s cricket tour of Pakistan in 2006. In fact, it was his voice that I heard before I even saw him. The long, lingering drawl with which he addressed Greg Chappell as “coach” caught my attention instantly. I turned around to see the face of the man who had uttered the word with such quiet confidence. More than the richness of his baritone, what struck me was the respect that infused his voice, which was warm and genuine, never slipping into servility or the breathless awe of a star-struck admirer.A tall, broad-shouldered young man, who could easily have passed for an elite athlete, greeted me. His confidence and quiet self-assurance left a lasting impression that slowly, almost imperceptibly, grew into an unspoken bond.Jassi from Hoshiarpur wore his Sikhi as a badge of honour. He was at that time working for one of India’s largest Hindi dailies and was among the handful of journalists from the vernacular press covering international sporting events. Forthright, outspoken and uncompromising, Jassi was by temperament anti-establishment, never comfortable with entrenched hierarchies or unquestioned authority, be it in the cricket administration or in the various newsrooms he worked in. He was like a child who, in his eagerness, was willing to work tirelessly on a story as long as his efforts were recognised and his journalism valued.He could easily get offended if his work was not appreciated or dumped over the tone and tenor of his stories, which were mostly anti-establishment. A man who loathed hierarchies was slowly realising he himself was a victim of a mindset that gave primacy to English language in most forms of reporting, including sports writing. His desire to break that chain and his skills as an investigative reporter got him a job in Hindustan Times, a newspaper I was associated with at the time.Jassi took his new job as a challenge, getting neither overawed nor intimidated and ensured the paper got the stories that became newsbreaks. He worked on his new language of expression and was soon comfortable with its idiom. His entry into English journalism, however, coincided with the increasing control of the establishment over news stories and content that restricted a reporter’s reach to strike at administrative wrongdoings.In this new world order, Jassi was being tamed and he was upset. He already had a reckless streak in him that would surface in moments of stress, leading to confrontational situations with those in powerful positions. He quit but never lost his verve and passion to look for stories that challenged the established patterns.His moment of glory came when P Sainath, then with The Hindu in Mumbai, was on the lookout for an intrepid reporter who could make sense of the complicated, exaggerated and nepotistic IPL business structure. Jassi was the man he turned to and what followed was a series of hard-hitting stories that rattled not just cricket’s top hierarchy but even the journalistic fraternity. They had not dared to do this expose.Yet he never found a permanent job anchor, though his skill-sets were never in doubt. His two documentaries, one on Sachin Tendulkar and the other on the first Indian to compete in the luge event of the Winter Olympics, Shiva Keshavan, won him many admirers. Shiva, in a condolence meeting held at the Press Club of India, spoke eloquently about the multifaceted talents Jassi possessed. In a moving tribute on Zoom from Italy, Shiva talked of his unusual approach and the fearlessness with which Jassi shot him in action.Jassi, at 56, left his friends and family far too early. Beneath his shifting emotional intensity and non-conformist persona was a simple man who longed for validation of his integrity and honest journalistic work — that lay at the heart of his sense of self.— The writer is the author of ‘Not Quite Cricket’ and ‘Not Just Cricket’