When I got a message from a friend about some unconfirmed news on Sunday noon, my vision blurred and my head started spinning. I messaged her back, saying she might have mistaken the name or person, but she said the news was about him. She said she would confirm it, and never have I ever hoped for something to be fake news more than this. Unfortunately, she confirmed the news soon after, and I felt numbness a creeping all over me.
Who was he to me? A colleague? A senior? A friend? A mentor? A brother? An advisor? A family member without blood ties? I have no clue. Technically, we were colleagues who worked together in the same team for less than a year. He was my first mentor in the industry. I was assigned a complicated component that loaded hundreds of libraries and ran into over 50 laks lines of code. At a time when Google wasn't the go-to entity and programming mastery was book-based, it was difficult for me to even understand the existing codebase which had umpteen objects lifecycle and interactions, let alone make changes to it. Every time I went to him with a question, he would direct me to some seniors. I was timid, apprehensive, and not so fluent in spoken English, but he made sure I approached them and got my doubts cleared. He would watch me from a distance until it was done. Later, we always joked about it, and I used to tell him that as a mentor, he didn't teach me anything. He would say he made me self-sufficient...
There was never a dull moment when he was around. He had this uncanny ability to turn every situation and every sentence into a laughing riot, even in board meetings. He was always the one who understood the rules and knew how to use it. At SCS, we had official working hours of 8-5 or 9-6, and he followed the 8-5 schedule. But most of us came around 10 and stayed back late, especially because our counterparts were in Munich and Vienna. We had a German manager who once asked him whether he could also do the same. He was strict about his work-life balance and said no. When the manager was insistent, he joked that his landlord would close the gate at 6 PM and he couldn't stay back late. The manager, due to cultural differences, didn't understand the joke and repeated the same reason in a board meeting, causing quite a stir.
Personally, when I was not ready to get married, he was the one who talked me out of it and encouraged me to be open. When I finally agreed to meet a prospective guy, he even advised me on how to approach the meeting and what to say and not say from a guy's perspective. When that person and his family turned out to be difficult and started making demands even before finalizing the marriage, I lashed out at him, saying that it was only because of him that I had to go through this. He responded by saying that one person is not representative of the whole world and that there would be others who would be a better match. Even though I refused to go through any more 'prospective guy-seeing ceremonies' at that time, his advice helped me to be open when I met the next guy years later, with whom I am now married.
When my parents passed, and I felt totally lost and alone, he was the one who helped me avoid slipping into depression. His daughter was only a couple of months old then, and he made sure I spent time with her to distract myself. He and his wife would come home with their daughter every single weekend, spend some time with me, and take me out for dinner. He would often become a hands-on dad, giving his wife a break while she and I went shopping. This continued for weeks, months, and even years. I am sure it wasn't easy for them, with such a small baby, to spend this much time on me. We only broke this tradition after I got married and moved to Kerala briefly. Once we moved back again, we used to meet up now and then. Even for Ram, he is among the few of my friends whom he knows quite well.
Unlike most of my friends who invested in property early on, we were two people who never felt the need to own a house in Bangalore and were happy in our long-term rented home. When the topic of buying property came up, we wanted to buy land and build a house ourselves rather than buy a ready-made flat. His family and I looked at a couple of plots, thinking we would buy nearby, but we finally decided it wasn't worth the headache. So I was surprised when he said they had finally bought land and were building a house recently. After 25 years, he finally completed his dream house and moved in two months ago, ticking off a major item on his bucket list.
In 2020 Jan, when we planned to move back to Kerala, we met up and even planned a trip to Europe that summer. He was usually not a travel person like me, but this time we made elaborate plans - His Wife, me and Ram on where to visit, while he and his daughter focused on where and what to eat. Unfortunately, COVID struck that year, and our travel plan didn’t materialize. With COVID and our move happening in the midst of that, we couldn't really catch up, although we made some short visits to Blr in between. So, finally, last Christmas, we decided to meet at his home in Kerala. Little did I expect that would be our last meeting, and my next visit there would be to say a final goodbye to him.
He was the most caring person without making it obvious. When his wife took a break after their daughter was born, he used to say it was a good decision, as the daughter grew up to be a happy child. But after that, he gave his full support to help his wife rebuild her career. Just as I had parent-like figures in my landlords, he also treated his landlords as family and often visited them even after they moved from the house. Sometimes he reminds me of my father when he brings a box of sweets every time he visits home. For his memorial service, his dad talked about the CCTV he installed and how he checked it all through the day—to see whether the gates were closed, whether the kitchen was active or even made sure the bills were paid as soon as it came. While talking to our friends about his passing, everyone had the same thing to say: how he helped them in one way or another. I checked his last message and phone call, and even that was about helping someone who was looking to get back into the industry after a break.
He was always the one who treaded the unusual path. Just a couple of years into the industry, he took a break to pursue an MSc in Mathematics for the love of the subject, cleared the NET, and taught for some time. Then he rejoined the industry, and at one point he had two offers—one from Microsoft and another from Intuit, which was a startup at the time—he joined as the fifth employee of Intuit (this was just after the dot-com bust when startups were not so sought after) and has been part of it for the last 20 years. Now, at the age of 47, he has left for another unexpected exploration. Perhaps this is also his way of going up there and pioneering something new.😪
PS: He was very concerned about his and his family's privacy, so much so that he stayed away from all social media and even ignored Google search recommendations. So I have deliberately kept all names out of this post.
