For a change, my blog title " raghuonthemove " does not reflect reality. For a change, raghu is stunned and still..
A good friend of mine, Ashish Chawla left us a few days back. An untimely death took away a good human being.
I first met Ashish in 2006 May, when i joined Accenture as an Associate Manager. He was a senior developer. In the first week of joining, we had a crisis. Ashish and I sat together for 2 days and nights to sort out it. During the entire fire fighting duration, he was calm, always smiling. Telling me not to worry and we will deliver. This was an early crisis in my new job and I wanted to prove that I can handle this. During that two days he kept insisting that we will deliver on time every time we hit a roadblock. Here was a guy who was very calm, composed under pressure. Something I learnt from him.
We went through a lot of crisis over the next few years. I used to go to him whenever there was something big, knowing fully well he can solve it and bail me out of the situation. Despite crisis, he was always smiling. Always calm.
Another aspect that impressed me was his ability to mentor youngsters. As a new team, we had a lot of youngsters (i used to call them my kids, sometimes even now), who were new to professional life, new to technology and had lot of doubts on how to approach things. He was always there for them. I used to tell him that he needs to guide these youngsters. He was always helpful, always there for these people. There were lot of times when I found him helping youngsters during the day, and staying pretty late in the night to complete his work. Here was a wonderful person ready to help others despite his own deliverables, problems & issues at work. This is something i learnt from him. To be there for people when they asked for my time.
He was a person who was never satisfied with doing work. It has to be done to perfection. I read somewhere that you should aim for perfection so that you reach excellence. But Ashish was one person who was not satisfied with excellence, he needed perfection. Perfection in everything he did.
After I moved out of accenture, i lost in touch with a lot of my team members, colleagues and Ashish was one among that group. But fortunately for me we got back in touch with me. He was going through health issues at that time but despite that he was always cheerful. I have called him a number of times when he was in hospital to inquire his health, and his response would always be a cheerful " I am fine, recovering" and more importantly a more cheerful " how are you doing" would follow.
We have been in touch almost every other week until last week of May 2017 when he was in one more of his numerous hospital visits and told me he will get discharged in a 3-4days.
Every time we spoke in the last couple of years, he always used ask me to come to his hometown, Dehradun to visit him and spend time there. Every time he would tell me, " I will take you to Mussoorie and we will go in my bike "".... I used to repeat the same thing, that I will come in 2018.
Some day, my friend, Some day, I will definitely make a trip to Dehradun. Not to see the town, but as a homage to you. May be, I will even make a trip to Mussoorie as per your request.
Until then, good bye.
