Saturday, April 17, 2010

In the Na(i)me and memory of Nai..

I do this in your memory. In honour of Mahesh Mahadevan, aka Nai.. truly one of the greatest human beings I have known in my life. No exaggerations.

In honour of your never-ending positivity.. infinite energy.. addictive enthusiasm for knowledge.. boundless intelligence..

In honour of your technical PJs (which only I would understand half the time :P )..

In honour of your multi-faceted talents that always left me mouth-wide-open, in everything, from music to mechanical engineering.. computers to quizzing..

Mahesh, you have always been a wonder. A symbol of something impossible to attain. Not just to any arbit junior at Bhavan's Varuna Vidyalaya, where u inspired hundreds of people u havent even met, but even to me and and the rest of your batchmates. If only you could read all your wall-posts now. Even when we won all those quizzes together because you knew all the answers.. even when we did our C++ superprogram experiments in lab with everyone else staring.. Even when we discussed problems in class behind the teachers back thinking we had solved the next biggest thing since e=mc2.. cracked away puns to the limit getting on everyone else's nerves- Dude, I was always awed, and secretly envious of you. How could you exist.. how could someone love knowledge as you have.. I think half of my outlook towards knowledge has always been you, dude, You.

I take honour in claiming you have been one of my closest friends up to date. Even when you turned heads all over Kerala with your brilliance (see this and this) I was telling people : "Thats Mahesh, my school buddy"




For the love of the world, none of us can understand how this happened to you. And no, we do NOT believe you are stupid enough to end yourself. Yet. All I can do now is hit myself on the head for not having been in touch with you for the last 2 months. Yes, you are at the opposite side of the world, but I cant help thinking I missed you out somewhere. Cant help thinking: you wanted to tell me something, but I didnt hear. Cant believe that maheshmahadevan.iitm@gmail.com will never again chat to me. Cant stop reading the chat history again and again.

Cant believe ! no one will end chats again with me with a full loud BHA! (watever that meant, originating from Butylated-Hydroxy-Anisole in Saritha maams to another hundred meaningless expansions).. that legacy is dead..




Dead.. That word has a numb feel to it. Dead. As in. No more half dazed
'Bha'rking Nai's out there. Dead, as in, the world will be devoid of your loud chuckle and sly smile forever.



You owed yourself to the world dude, and you owed yourself to us. The world needed your brilliance.




I cannot think of any way to honour or mourn you now. I'm in that mode of helplessness, and I know it will take sometime to subside. I'm in that life-death-philosophy mood that everyone goes to when they see someone so near is suddenly missing. Yea, world, be wary of philosophic Me for sometime :). I will learn to accept once again that every person I see now, it might be for the last time. And all I can do is to try even more harder than ever to keep in touch.. and listen intently to everyone of my friends out there.. I have learnt that this is the one of the hardest things to do in life.. but I will still attempt it.. for who knows when the last time will be ?

But for now, in the name of all Varunites and friends of Nai out there: I remember you, my friend. I have no illusions that this blog will do anything productive than take up kilobytes of webspace, and invite comments, but it is the least I can do. I remember you, and as long as my healthy memory permits, I will. Your memory will not fade away into the "unseen orphaned pages of the cyberspace discontinuum" like your last post.

And like someone said, I will always await that one more smartass comment from you. Or one last PJ. Yea, just once more would be good..

(PS: For those who are clueless, Mahesh Mahadevan aka Nai was my school friend from BVV Kochi. He was found dead in his university UC Irvine a few days ago.I think the rest of the blog is self-explanatory)



Please also check
- http://www.findmahesh.com/

The organisation called Surabhi is collecting money for the cause of bringing Mahesh's body back. You can donate money to help bring his body back here. There is already and outpour of funds for this, apparently.

For those with doubts, I have (kind of) verified their authenticity by contacting his sister, who has said she has been contacted by the group which says they will take care of the return of his body. For further enquiries you may mail the ids on the website itself. Also check:

http://www.clubs.uci.edu/surabhi/

Another blogpost regarding Mahesh

- http://havetimewillwaste.blogspot.com/2010/04/good-bye-dog.html

News reports regarding this :

- UC Irvine

- Asianet (outrageously crappy piece of reporting. What nonsensical yellow journalism in Kerala.)