India, June 12 -- Of all the memories I have of him, I would remember Jaspal, the athlete, the most.

I've known him ever since I stepped into shooting. We began interacting when I made it to the national squad. He was the star of the team, the only one winning medals in our time. Back then, we only had one foreign coach, so both rifle and pistol teams were much more together, and Jaspal and I travelled to a lot of competitions together.

I can never forget one such trip.

We were on a 40-day tour in Europe in 1999, and I was due to get married that year (to Siddharth Shirur). Those were the days when we had no phones - or very few like Jaspal had one - and were on shoestring budgets. Staying in touch with family was not that easy, even f...