Prof Mohan Bhandari: It is there, but it is not there

2nd September 2026. 

At 6.00pm in one of the IDC alumni WhatsApp groups I saw message informing that Prof Mohan Bhandari has passed away. 

I don’t know if the word “shock” will do any justice to the feeling when we read that message. 

The pain was beyond articulation. The silence was deafening. 

I just sat there reading that message again and again. 

One of the greatest academicians ever has been liberated. One great friend has vanished into thin air. The great philosopher has followed his favorite line “It is there but it is not there…..” 

Prof Bhandari had told me once: “We are all guests on this earth, bubbles which can burst anytime…..”. I have never forgotten that line. 

A flashback: 

The year was 1990. I had just got admission to the Master’s programme in the Industrial Design Centre (now known as IDC School of Design) at IIT Bombay. At that time, the yearly intake was only 25, ten for MDes in Visual Communication and 15 for Product Design. The first few weeks were dedicated to “Orientation” in which all 25 students had to work in various studios in the department and we had one lecture every day by a faculty member at IDC. Each lecture was an eye opener and I was in wonderment hearing about the numerous details, data collection, in depth study, analysis, user study, experiments, ideations, testing and all the hard work which go into each design project. One day, a very thin man entered the lecture room and started his talk. Unusual at that time, he didn’t show any slides, he just spoke. But that lecture was so mesmerizing that I felt that I have come across a genius. It was like a discourse by a spiritual master, very profound statements, in a down to earth and humble tone, but very clear in his beliefs. For the first time in my life, after a lecture, I went and asked the speaker “May I know your name?”. He answered very politely: “Bhandari”. That experience stayed with me. 

After the orientation, one day he appeared in our classroom and started teaching us “Visual Design”. No slides, only verbal explanations and discussions. One assignment he gave was on “The sensory experience” which was mind boggling. We were asked to visually represent the sensory experience of our feet when we walk from the hostel room to the classroom. 

I think it was the most difficult and most challenging assignment I have ever done in my student life. He sat with each one of us and discussed our visuals in detail, dissecting threadbare everything we have done, challenging every decision we have taken, questioning every line and dot we have drawn. There was no internet or any AI tools at that time, to help the lazy ones. 

We had to sit down, think, think and think again – deep contemplation and looking inwards – a process no one was accustomed to do so far. During the first personal interaction with me, after looking at all my drawings and dissecting my visual grammar, he said “This assignment needs three to four hours of thinking, the best idea might not appear in a few minutes”. That sentence was an eye opener for me. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, I went back, literally, to the drawing board and tried to see what was my experience walking to the classroom. During the first week of my stay in the campus, once when I was walking in front of the central library, I saw a snake crossing my path. Everyone stopped and looked at the snake with respect and waited it to pass. After that whenever I walked in that area from the library towards IDC through the famous “infinity corridor” of IIT Bombay, I had to look carefully at the ground, be careful not to step on a snake. I tried to translate that fear into a visual for this assignment. After hours of debate and reworking I think I passed the “Bhandari test” of visualizing the unseen!

 Many times, when I was stuck, he would grab a pen, draw a square and then make a beautiful drawing which often transcended the boundaries of the square. After a few years, I realized that he was triggering a fire in each student to erase all the baggage of training we came with and rewrite the visual grammar and the thinking process. He changed the way I was seeing things around me; he changed the way my thinking developed over a life time. It was like that proverb which said “teach a man fishing and he will be happy for the rest of his life..” 

 His command over languages, especially English and Pure Hindi were remarkable. Some of his philosophical statements became folklore among IDC alumni. The most famous quote was “It is there, but it is not there….”. I am afraid nobody understood what he meant by saying that, but that sentence became his tag line and a legend! 

 His classes about form, visual and meaning, drawing, visualization, role of five senses in visual expression etc were quite difficult for students to understand. Now when I look back, I realise that the problem was the way visual concepts were learnt till we reached IDC. We were not mentally ready to tackle difficult and challenging assignments. The beauty of all assignments Prof Bhandari gave us were in such a way, we just cannot get any external help in the form of references from books or magazines. The assignments had to come totally from within our personal thinking process. No short cuts. No easy way out. No body to help. But whatever we created in those assignments were totally our own– hundred percent original. Even if it was bad, I could proudly say that it is 100% mine. That feeling of pride and happiness coming from creating and seeing something original was amazing, like being on top of the world! I spent most of my vacations between semesters looking at Bhandari’s assignments and learning and relearning from what I did and what he said. 

He questioned every visual element I did; he asked “Why that line?”, “Why is it there”, Why not at the top?, Why is it at that angle, Why did you use brush for that line? Why not a pencil? Why did you put three dots there? Why not four? Why is it red? What does a red dot mean? The questioning went on and on till I was able to convince him about every decision I made. Yes, it was often irritating, painful, frustrating and time consuming. 

Sometimes he would say that the drawing is too rough, make it more finished. After seeing the reworked visual he would say in his classic slow, whispering tone: “Oh my my, now this is too finished and precise, make it slightly more rough and come back!!”. Back to the drawing board then, we wondered what was actually wrong with the first version! 

 Those days, only a few teachers were friendly and approachable in IDC, and Bhandari was one among the three teachers we felt safe, friendly, kind and secure to interact with. I was among a group of students who became very friendly with him. We could walk into his office and home anytime and have endless conversations with him. Unmarried at that time, he offered tea from his numerous experiments with tea at home. One day it will be black tea with a drop of honey, another day it will have cream and elaichi, another day with a spoon of brandy. He was very health conscious, very very careful about what he consumed. Once we had a dinner at his home, and the taste of dal he prepared lingers even today. 

 In the final semester, like everyone else, my classmates were also tense about the job scene. There was no official placement activity those days, all passing out students got jobs through word of mouth. Bhandari told us that we should not worry at all about jobs and said that everyone will get a job. His assurance relieved me a lot from the worry about getting a job. Somehow, I felt like believing what he said. His words came true, within two weeks of completing the course, all of us got good jobs. 

 The second part of my interaction with him started when joined IDC as a faculty member in 2000. His room, I noticed had become the one and only place for faculty members to interact with each other. He had kept a nice kettle and so many types of tea in his cabin. Faculty members used to walk in and he was always happy to make tea for them. 

Later, I worked with him in a few committees and he was the only faculty who could lighten up boring meetings with lighthearted comments and jokes and loved pulling a few legs. Those were the days the new term “HCI” (Human Computer Interaction) had taken birth. It became the talking point in IDC, everyone started using this term. To my surprise, I realized that Bhandari was with me in getting fed up of this HCI term everywhere. It was during one of my chats with him at the GATE office, we coined a new term “HHI” for “Human Human Interaction” as a rejoinder to the term HCI. I still remember the hilarious laughter we had after creating this acronym! 

 He retired from IDC a few years after I joined. Bhandari bought a nice flat in a place between Mulund and Thane. We were in touch for quite some time and I visited him a few times at home. Even after retirement, he loved to do all his shopping in Powai, IIT area. Sometimes I used to accompany him in his visits to our campus. He used to say “Come let’s have that milk tea with sugar from Laxmi restaurant”. 

His visits were meticulously planned – every shopkeeper was informed about his purchase list in advance. He just walks in to a medical store, book store, stationary shop, grocery shop etc. Everything is packed and kept with the bill. He has to pay, collect the packet and go to the next shop! We was very fond of an author named Eknath Eeswaran, I think he had all the books written by him in his collection. 

 I had a great discussion with him and his wife Preeti during my last visit to his place in March 2024. It is a strange coincidence that Prof Bhandari and his wife were my classmates in two courses. I attended the Part one course of Art of Living program in Powai with Prof Bhandari in 2002. Later in 2020 his wife Preeti attended a course of Art of Living with me during the covid time in online mode. In many follow up sessions after that, I used to see her name in zoom screens. A practicing architect, Mrs Preeti is a very dedicated volunteer and organizes various courses for the Art of Living program in Mumbai.

 Bhandari shared his childhood experiences in which he described a railway track near his home where he and his friends used to run around and play on both the sides of the railway track and how they used to feel scared at the sound of the fast-moving train. He had kept two books on alternative healing and spirituality for me. I went to meet him with some special tea leaves, but to my surprise, he had stopped drinking tea a few years back. He got very interested in music and showed me his latest music system. 

 We have lost a great academician, a great thinker, a wonderful human being and a great friend, philosopher, guide and guru. 

Let his soul reach satgati and peace. Om Shanti.