Vece Paes had a calmness that was highly infectious. His son, the legendary Indian tennis player Leander, once told this correspondent that during testing situations, he always drew, both inner peace and strength, from his father’s silent yet strict demeanour. He was a yaaron ka yaar (great friend) too, as Leander revealed in a previous conversation: “Dad loves his 1972 Munich Olympics hockey teammates and whenever they meet, it’s great to see their camaraderie still very much there.”

This is the reason one of Paes’s Munich Games teammates, former India hockey captain and son of the legendary Dhyan Chand, Ashok Kumar, just could not get over the news of his passing on Thursday. Paes, 80, passed away at a Kolkata hospital due to age-related health issues.

Shocking news

“It’s shocking to learn that Vece ji is no more. We would meet at least once a year at different sports functions and he was always a gentleman just like his playing days. Vece ji was like a sadhu sant [saint-like] aadmi, a gem of a person, sincere, honest and very helpful. When I began my club career in 1969 at Mohun Bagan in Kolkata as a centre-forward, Vece ji played centre-half there. He would feed me brilliant passes and I ended up scoring so many goals that I eventually had to get picked for India. We played together for three seasons at Mohun Bagan and dominated the Indian hockey club scene, winning the Calcutta League thrice, the Beighton Cup thrice and the Bombay Gold Cup once and finishing runners-up twice. He was our central mainstay,” Ashok Kumar told mid-day on Thursday, going on to recall an interesting previous meeting between the two.