Saying Good Bye to Jignesh Parekh

 

The evening of 19th Feb 2010 brought with it the death of a good friend, Jignesh Parekh. Jigs, as we used to call him, lived life to the fullest. He loved all the good things in life and I don't think he ever saw any sense in being modest about it! His zest for life was probably only superceded by his uncontrollable urge for spewing one-liners!

I met Jigs for the first time at Hurix Systems, an eLearning company in Mumbai. When I quit Hurix, we left as acquaintances. He was good fun to be around and we hung out as part of a larger group. 7 years later, life arranged it so that we were working in the same organization again. This time we became friends. A lot had changed in both our lives since our Hurix days. We were both married and were both parents now. I was father to two girls and Jigs was dad to a four year old son. We realized we had a lot more in common now than just offices. We took breaks together and talked about our families and life in general. On most occasions, I listened while Jigs talked. He was the quintessential sales man, knowledgeable about a lot of things under the sun and a smooth talker. He was also the quintessential Gujju in that he had the typical, sharp Gujju-business-mind and the ability to recognize a good deal! When I think about it now, he gave me some very good advice that helped me bargain better when I was house shopping.

Love Jignesh or merely like him (I don't think anyone ever hated him), you definitely could not ignore him! He was all around. His jokes and one-liners brought alive our lunches in the office pantry. He could always see the funny side of anything and although at times his jokes would be straight out of high school, they still made you laugh!

And that's why I'm finding this particular Monday morning very difficult to get through. It is the first working day after Jigs passed away and the jokes have died with him. I cannot believe that we will never see him again, never hear another smart quip or a funny one-liner. The weekend before the 19th was the weekend of the blasts at German Bakery. When news got around, almost everyone from our office that knew him messaged Jignesh to ask if he was okay. That's because Jignesh was a regular at German Bakery. He loved the upbeat atmosphere of Koregaon Park and chose to live there even if he had to drive 40 minutes to work. German Bakery was his regular haunt because it was the place he would eat breakfast. During the week after the blast, he once commented that had he not been in Bombay with his family, he would have been at German Bakery that fateful day. As luck would have it, he cheated death that weekend but it caught up with him the very next weekend.

A couple of weeks before his accident, we often talked about how unpredictable life was and how we should always plan for our family's security. May be it was premonition or may be it was just the way Jigs was...totally focused on his wife and son. It's one of life's painful ironies that he met with his accident as he was driving back to be with his family. I can only hope today that he had enough time to actually put his plans into action before he was called away.

My biggest regret is that I didn't get a chance to see him one last time. I was on leave that fateful Friday. But I am most grateful for the fact that although we worked together, Jigs and I were able to keep our differences in opinions aside so that it didn't affect our friendship. For someone who loved to talk as much as he did, Jigs made a silent exit. But for those of us that remain, the silence is deafening.