Dead ere his prime – Prof Joydeep Biswas pens a heartfelt obituary for Sudarshan Gupta

As I write this elegy for Sudarshan who was born later to me, he is burning at Silchar crematorium. As I am groping for words to cobble together an epitaph for him, I find before me hundreds of mourners thronging around his pyre. They are from all walks of life, of all age groups and of all hues from the political spectrum.

He was loveable. He was suave. He was intelligent. He was witty. He was knowledgeable. But above everything he was an excellent human being. A pious soul.

Sudarshan was our leader in the Assam College Teachers’ Association. In the last quarter-of-a-century period I have not come across a more committed, loyal and happening ACTA member in Barak Valley.

My personal debts to Sudarshan are abound. In the summer of 2017, I was diagnosed with advance stage Adenocarcinoma Lung with bone metastases in Tata Medical Center in Kolkata. Doctors attending on me were not ready to grant me more than six months of stay in this beautiful planet. That was a critical phase of crisis for me, my family and all those who sincerely thought that I had a legitimate right to live for some more years. Back home in Silchar, Sudarshan was crisscrossing the town to arrange for fund for my possible treatment abroad. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to look for alternative destinations for my treatment. I was not at all aware of the agony he was passing through in anticipation of my imminent end. Given the kind of person he was, Sudarshan never shared with anyone what he had done for me. Since that fateful morning of 5 January, some of our common friends have been declassifying the details of those days when Sudarshan was unhesitatingly bartering his remaining years in this world with mine!

As my longish treatment got underway in TMC with almost no hope of survival beyond a few months, Sudarshan rushed to Kolkata with Debasis da (a senior colleague of mine, Debasis Chakraborty) and stayed there for ten days only to keep me in his cosy company.

Actually, I never cared to know how much I loved him. But every moment of the long hours all these ten days in the eerie ICU lounge on the third floor of the hospital was telling me how important Sudarshan was to my existence.

I just don’t know how Moumita, his wife, and Taan, his eleven-year-old son, will come to terms in a life without Sudarshan.

For me the world will not be the same again.