TimesView : June 2014

Obituary

Do we ever know when we will leave this world? Life and death are so unpredictable!

After months of heat wave, the cool early morning downpour today drove me to rush out to the terrace to take a short video grab of prelude to the Delhi monsoons. After a quick editing had uploaded the video clip in my YouTube channel and then shared directly with one of my WhatsApp group - EXL Buddies that constitutes ex-colleagues of our former organisation.

My WhatsApp had been muted since the past few days while I had deliberately shutdown the mobile data service in order to avoid distraction due to an urgent piece of work. After having posted the video clip I started glancing through the huge number of pending mails.

Scrolling down caused some confusion as almost all messages had similar words like R.I.P., condolences, shock, etc. until I followed the thread where it originated and then a pal of gloom came over me ever since.

The message from our esteemed member, Gaurav Banerjee's ID read the following with date and time stamp:

" 25-06-2014
Finally free from all the pain and suffering.. He lost his battle against Cancer and left us in pain..
We love you n wish u cud come back just once..
Gaurav' Family..
2:05 pm"

It was most difficult to accept the truth that Gaurav Banerjee passed away at such a young age. Barely two years ago, Gaurav tied the knot with his co-worker who hails from Assam. Although we have never met for years, but the WhatsApp forum was good enough to keep in touch frequently.

A senior human resource and admin personnel who was employed with a multinational organisation in Gurgaon, Gaurav had always some of the finest humour up his sleeves that kept people rolling out of laughter. Most members and colleagues recall him as a jolly young guy and a team player.

His last humour message to the EXL Buddies WhatsApp group was on 21 June 2014 but, it is an irony indeed that he never confided his fatal ailments to anybody within the group, thereby, giving a false impression with his communique and profile picture that all was fine with him.

He hailed from Lucknow and had his education from Institute of Management Studies, Dehradun and HNB Garhwal University. Besides, he had a great penchant for cameras and photography.

In general, Gaurav was fun-loving, compassionate and always ready to help people in distress that we will always remember him. Every time I scroll into my WhatsApp group an image of him flashes up my mind and his messages reverberates in my ears. Gaurav Banerjee, may your soul rest in eternal bliss!

Below are the videos: