After more than fifty years of friendship, we found ourselves juggling careers, marriages, and raising children, often all at the same time. He migrated in 1980, just after the Vietnam draft was withdrawn; I followed in 1988.
It was all destiny.
We were very different by nature, he enjoyed life in his own way, while I chose a quieter, more disciplined path, being a teetotaler from a Bhagat family. Yet those differences never mattered; if anything, they made our friendship richer.
We had planned to travel together in March 2025, to Mumbai and Goa. He was already in India, but his health would not allow him to endure the arduous journey any further.
He left us after fighting like a brave man—enduring open-heart surgeries and surviving a rare cancer. Through it all, the love remained constant. We loved each other deeply and stayed true buddies to the very end.
I still don’t know why, in 2017, when he was confronting cancer, he asked his wife Neelam to call me and ask me to pray for him. Perhaps he sensed something deeper. Knowing his character, it was no surprise that he faced those adverse conditions with courage—and overcame them.
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