This man. This man, when I was starving actor status and was a lead in a Sundance Film Festival movie, but couldn’t afford to fly from London where I was studying to attend the festival. This man paid for a hotel for the two of us, and even helped with other expenses, and we had the grandest most amazing time together. But I still took it for granted. Only in retrospect do I realize how unique he was, that I had a BROTHER who was more excited than ME about something I had done. More excited about my accomplishments than myself. And he enabled me to go, and we partied and watched films and got into mischief, and he was by my side through all the firsts for a young actor. My biggest fan, a partner in crime.

Don’t get me wrong though. He had ulterior motives. A huge Indiana Jones and Star Wars fan, he was obsessed with Harrison Ford. Well, Harrison Ford’s daughter Georgia was in my film. And he was dying to meet her. And she did not disappoint! After an amazing, weekend, on our last night, we all partied together and took an Uber back to the hotel. And I’ve never seen someone so happy, because lovely Georgia gave Shekhar a kiss on the cheek goodnight, and the man was on Cloud 9.

He was a budding writer and we hoped his films would take us back to Sundance someday. Hopefully this scholarship will pass that, and other dreams, down to someone else.