This world is not the same place without Ashok. What a warm, caring, gentle soul he has, and one can be reassured and treasure him in our hearts and minds. This huge gap of his physical presence will take a long time to fill, but with the memories he has left behind, let us be thankful to have known him, and celebrate him.
I have never known life without him. He was 18months younger to me, but growing up we were always together - playing, studying, going to school, hanging out, fighting :-) The photo of our family attached was taken when he was about 11 years old. You will recognise him seated on the left - he was always so engaged and focused as you can tell even in this old photo. I am the skinny one sitting next to him, then our other two siblings, and our mother, grandparents, and father on the right.
Would like to share two incidents that stand out when we were growing up. Though he was younger than me, he leapfrogged grades and we ended up appearing for our high school exams together, and studying together. He was often helping me with my algebra problems. When we were studying for our English Language final exam, he shared sentence with me that his english teacher had given them -- for possible use. Well, I ended up using it - and it was the centrepiece of the essay/story i wrote. That i got an A+ in english language i think can be attributed to this ! So 'Sheet lightning was dancing on the horizon to the broken tune of far off thunder' helped me make the grade.
Always so helpful and unassuming, what a contribution he was !
The second incident is a testament of his brilliance, and the simple ways in which expressed it. Right around our high school exams, my parents encouraged him to apply for the National Science Aptitude test (something like that as best i remember). Around this time, i would see him sitting on the steps of our hutment in Mandi House and bouncing a ping pong ball on the steps. It turns out that he was doing his science project for this national aptitude test, and he was testing testing his theory on the slope of the steps and the way the ball would bounce !! Needless to say, he was among the toppers in this national competition, winning prizes and scholarship.
The clarity and simplicity with which he resolved things was quite amazing !
I miss him more than I can say, and we are so lucky to have been part of his life.
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