Memories — Uday Sengupta

Yesterday I attended the first Anniversary of Uday Sengupta leaving this world. It brought back some touching memories.

Uday went thru cancer treatment for his brain tumor before I was diagnosed with cancer. He and his family, like most people, had kept the bad news limited to their family, but as usual, everybody knew about it. When I was diagnosed with it, he was in a period that was quite optimistic period during his treatment. He visited me several times and used to be very sentimental. He will affectionately sit next to me hold my hands and will assure me that things will improve and I will be OK. He was always trying to reassure me.

Uday was a talented man — a scientist, and entrepreneur, a social worker who after making fortune in his company started contributing to the less privileged people in the society and got involved in ‘learning technology revolution’ and was involved in serious projects in China. He was a good painter also. His paintings in his house clearly show how talented he was. But above all these things, he was a sensitive and caring human.

Unfortunately by the time I got cured of my cancer, his tumor started acting up. And finally cancer won.

Sitting in the Puja for his anniversary, all those things were going thru my memory. I could not help but think — how lucky I am to be here and healthy. Ironically, many people were commenting at that function for Uday about how much younger and better I look compared to before cancer. The joke that I always use in response to these comments that ‘I tried everything to lose weight, but the only thing that worked was cancer’ came to my mouth, but I felt hesitant saying that.

Life is so uncertain. The best is to live each day as this is the only day you have to appreciate what you have, to contribute to the world (and all people in it) that gave you so much, and to really enjoy the passage. Yes, life is a passage and we should maximize not the length of time but the value of time that we spend in this passage.