In Memoriam: Dev Kumar Dattab. November 20, 1912
d. September 22, 2007
Today is a sad day in the life of my family. For nearly thirty four years, I have been blessed to have the loving support and affection of both of my grandparents on my mom's side. That changed today. Early this morning, at around 3:00am, I lost my grandfather. My dadu (grandpa, in Bengali) died rather unexpectedly. His death came after a short period of deterioration in his health. It was a mere four months ago that dadu was the healthiest and most vibrant 94-year old I could ever imagine. Today, dadu left us in the same exemplary manner in which he lived his entire life.
My grandfather was a wonderful father, a loving husband and brother, and an amazing grandfather. It was my dadu that named me Abhijit when I was born, it was he who greeted me with the same reassuring "I am well if you are well" every time I asked him about his health, and it was he who has taught me more about living with discipline and dignity than any other human being ever has, and perhaps ever will.
It is far too late tonight to do this post justice and my emotions are still unsettled; there is much that remains to be written about dadu and I look forward to completing this post over the next few days.
Goodbye dadu. You are my inspiration and I shall never forget you. I miss you.
