portrait of grief

         Jayendra Bhatt was a rickety old man, at least at first glance. He would careen down the sidewalk using his old cane as if it were a prop to make his grandchildren laugh.  “He had this funny British-Indian accent,” said Kush Bhatt, 15, his youngest grandchild. “He would say things like, ‘make haste’ when he wanted us to hurry and ‘take heed’ when he wanted us to listen.”  Those were phrases he once often used on students as a Professor and Dean at Sardar Patel University in Anand, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat. He was a scholar, philosopher, athlete, and boxer (and though he looked delicate in his old age, he still had the muscles to prove it). An avid reader, Bhatt always had a book in hand. Indeed, in his very last moments, before dying of a heart attack while lying in his bed, Bhatt took his final breath with a book rested on his chest.  Bhatt was an atheist who believed that happiness was essential to life, and that it came from peace within the heart, not from outside forces. “Every day he would ask the same thing when I got home from school,” Kush added. “He would ask, ‘Are you happy?’ I would say, ‘Yeah Dada, I’m happy.’ Then he'd smile and say, ‘Good, that’s all.’” 

in memoriam, 4/5/08