“Goodbye grandpa”

My grandfather passed away today.

I didn’t realize how close I was to him until I heard of his death. That’s when it really hit me.

Some of my earliest memories of India are associated with him. When my family moved to India I remember staying with him and my grandmother. He used to drive me to school. I was still not used to Indian food, a result of which I used to put the food they served us at school in my school bag. What I was not so good at was removing the food from my bag once I’d get back home. He discovered this when he found a trial of ants leading to my bag. I remember him having a good laugh over it.

He taught me a lot about Hinduism. He used to take me the EME temple close to his house whenever possible. He also used to try and tell me snippets from the Ramayana when I was growing up.

Cricket and politics were his passions, and I must admit it was quite fun to see him getting worked up about both. He loved telling people that his son looked like Sourav Ganguly (which I believe he does).

Like me, he loved his food. We were both huge fans of my grandmother’s mutton curry. Kamling, his favorite Chinese restaurant in Mumbai, soon became one of my favorite places to eat as well. And man, did he enjoy his seafood! He tried to explain to me numerous times how to eat bony fish without choking by correctly deboning it, and I hope one day to actually be able to do that.

In later years I became one of his go-to people for all tech related issues, be it how to check his email on his phone, or how to configure his computer. In fact, the last time I visited him before leaving for the U.S. was when I helped him setup Gmail to allow him to reply in Bengali. That was the last time I saw him.

In short, my grandfather was awesome.

Goodbye grandpa. You will be missed terribly.