From the moment I knew him he was this cool big brother of mine who was always aware of what I was fond of..like I still remember I must be around 9 years old and shekhar bhaiya was visiting our home in Korba. At that time of the year Godzilla (1998) was released and I was very fascinated by it because it was the first of it’s kind. So bhaiya had this cool t-shirt of godzilla which had a button on it and when pressed made this awesome sound of godzilla screaming and I got fascinated with it.

So I asked my mum and dad to buy such a t-shirt for me too but it was an exclusive godzilla merchandise, so unavailable in India. I was sad with this news but somehow shekhar bhaiya came to know about this and he offered me his t shirt. Not only that he also gave me a Spiderman T shirt. I was not only the most happy kid at that time but I also came to realize for the fact that I was the most privileged to have such a kind cool, awesome and caring elder brother. Because of his unexpected selfless gesture, I had this new found love and respect for him and that was my first impression for him which just kept on growing growing. I had those T shirts for years.

I feel privileged to be a part of an incredible life journey of an angel that walked the earth and blessed us with his presence, love, care and happiness leaving us with wonderful memories.

It’s hard to choose a single story. Plus, his parents could see this, and there’re things I wouldn’t want mine to know if the tables were turned – edit this as you’d feel appropriate. In the aggregate, let’s just say awesome, sometimes serendipitous things happened when you were around him.

There was Chicago, where I was a younger-than-usual intern with a bad fake ID (statue of limitations has to be up by now) that ended up working nowhere except the grocery store liquor aisle. And yet, my first week in the city, when I ditched the rest of my intern class to hang out because he was in town for Accenture training, it worked in line at Rockit Bar on West Hubbard.

There was Kabin bar, where we went for a comedy show. He was between apartments and crashing with a friend in Brookyln, so he had to leave early, but when Hannibal Burress showed up on stage for a surprise set, he blew off the curfew. He crashed on my couch, and in exchange, we both enjoyed a bit about Bill Cosby that’d blow up the Internet two weeks later.

But most importantly to me, there was my first real house party, which he invited me to (who does that? Invite a gawky, awkward, wide-eyed freshman to a house party?). There, he introduced me to lifelong friends, and gave me front row (lawn?) seats to two of those friends drunk boxing each other on Washtenaw. He handed me a pair of boxing gloves a minute later, with which I sparred his much-taller, much-stronger roommate, and the next morning, the liquor he’d soaked me in handed me my first five-alarm hangover. What he really handed me was a taste of what college could be, and a sample of the joie de vivre with which he approached life.