(11 June 1973-10 December 2025)
‘As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.’ Shakespeare quoted by Uma Iyengar, my friend of 50 years and Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The Book Review, as we sat on New Year’s Eve in Bangalore, grieving over the passing of her son, Manu Iyengar, age 52, on 10 December 2025, in Barcelona where he had moved with his wife Amalia from Paris in 2023. Manu was the apple of eye of his entire family, in particular his grandparents, Rajalakshmi and Professor KR Acharya. It was from the latter that Manu had imbibed his deep love of Sanskrit as he had sat at his grandfather’s feet listening to him reciting slokas since he was two. Purushasuktam Manu knew by heart and recited it with unfailing insistence on right delivery of the slokas.
Manu went to Modern School, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi, after two years at Rajni Mathur and Shirley Kutty’s famed Magic Years from 1976. In his High School year, he was chosen to represent India by the Computer Society of India in a competition in Singapore where he and his team were awarded the First Prize. And it was clear by then that that is where his career trajectory lay, as a software professional. His four-year stint in Rochester University, USA paved the way for this. He worked in start-ups for eight years before setting up his own consultancy.
Manu was part of The Book Review family since he could read and write. He began by writing reviews as a child for the Children’s special issues. As he grew up, his intense passion for drawing led to his designing brochures and covers for The Book Review, and one of them was for the January 2016 issue when TBR turned 40. Uma had asked him a few months ago to design the cover for the January 2026 issue when TBR turns 50, little knowing that Manu would not be given the time ever again to design anything. So we have decided to use the 40th year cover modified for this issue.
Manu was in charge of designing the website of The Book Review when we decided to start a digital edition of the journal in 2012 in association with Alliance Web Solution. He worked on the project with his passion for detail and precision, refusing to be hurried into delivering anything shoddy or imperfect, much like his mother Uma has always done. Manu again worked closely with Mallika Joseph, the current IT Consultant of TBR, when the website was revamped and the Archive Upload project undertaken in 2017 and completed in 2018 in association with Osama Manzar’s Digital Empowerment Foundation. Manu had so much more to give to the journal which is not to be.
Imbued with real empathy for people and an innate curiosity about the world around him, a more devoted son there could not be than Manu who was deeply attached to his father, the late BN Iyengar who had passed on his passion for music and all matters IT to his elder son. An equally fond brother he was to Rishi who is now a Trustee of The Book Review Literary Trust. Manu touched many many lives in the short few years that he was given. That more than 50 of his MSVV alumni wrote on the day he went attests to that, as does the fact that innumerable friends and cousins flew from the US, Paris and Spain to be present at Manu’s funeral in Barcelona. Chandrika, daughter of TBR’s Founder-Editor Chitra Narayanan, was one of them.
The finality of death is upon all of us and Manu being snatched away far before his time leaves Team TBR bereft. I know the larger family of Friends of TBR will grieve with us.
CC