Celebration of Life

Adhip Chaudhuri

July 25, 1951 – January 13, 2014

January 18, 2014

Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart, Georgetown University

Washington, DC

 
CELEBRANT                             Rev. Leo Lefebure

Entrance Hymn                                                           “All Creatures of Our God and King” (611)

Welcome and Opening Prayer                                   Rev. Leo Lefebure

First Reading                                                              Wisdom 3:1-9

                                                                                   Biswajit Banerjee

Responsorial Psalm                                                    Psalm 23

                                                                                   Indranil Ghosh

Second Reading                                                         Revelation 14:13

                                                                                   David Goldfrank

Gospel                                                                        John 10:11-17

Homily                                                                        Rev. Leo Lefebure

“Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo by R. Tagore

(Where the Mind is Without Fear)                               Doc Ghose

Reflections  
                                                               
                                                                                  Indranil Ghosh

                                                                                  Prem Saggar

                                                                                  Ibrahim Oweiss

                                                                                  Amit Shah

                                                                                  Neal Chaudhuri

                                                                                  Maya Chaudhuri

Mozart’s“Ave Verum Corpus”                                     Yuniko Rogers

General Intercessions                                               Margaret McBride

The Lord’s Prayer

Closing Prayer and Blessing

Closing Hymn                                                “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” 

Thanks to Luke Schafer for organizing singing and music

Adhip Chaudhuri was an international economist and assistant professor of economics at Georgetown University from 1979 to 2013.  His research and writing applied philosopher John Rawls’s seminal work on social justice to measurable economic social welfare indices.

A gifted teacher known for his ability to make difficult concepts understandable and relevant to his students’ lives, Adhip was recognized as teacher of the year three times. One of his students rated him as “the real deal,” adding, “His lectures are clear, relevant, and to the point.…Pay attention, dive into the material, and Chaudhuri will maximize your return on the time you invest in the course.”

Adhip taught and lectured internationally in Vienna, Hanoi, and Doha, Qatar. His writings on international trade, finance, and social welfare appeared in such academic journals as Theory and Decision and Social Choice and Welfare and in The Multinational Corporation in the 1980s, edited by Charles P. Kindleberger and David Audretsch, published by MIT Press in 1983.

Adhip was most proud of his children, Maya and Neal Chaudhuri.  Maya is currently working for the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.  Neal is studying biology at Georgetown University.  

Born in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, India, on July 25, 1951, to Sabitri and N. K. Chaudhuri, Adhip was the youngest of four children.  He attended Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission high school in Kolkata (Calcutta), graduating in 1967 with high honors in statewide examinations, and St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, where he graduated in 1970 with honors in economics at the top of both his class and the university.

He pursued graduate studies at Delhi School of Economics and Columbia University, New York, where he obtained a PhD in economics with his dissertation, “Envy, Distributive Justice, and Social Choice.” His thesis advisers were Nobel Prize­winning economists William Vickery and Edmund Phelps.  His areas of specialization were welfare economics, international economics, and the history of economic thought.

Adhip was also a passionate bridge and tennis player and an avid gardener. 

Adhip leaves behind his wife, Joanne Kinney Smyth, his children, Maya and Neal, his brother, Pradip, and sister, Shibani, of Kolkata, his extended family, and many friends around the world.

************

 The family of Adhip is grateful for all the love, support and prayers offered to us and Adhip.  To his friends and family, thank you for the gift of your friendship and the love and affection you have given him throughout his life. 

                                                       *************

We invite you to join us at Copley Hall Formal Lounge immediately following the service for a reception.  It is a five-minute walk from the chapel. 

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because dawn has come.”

Rabindranath Tagore 

Gospel and Homily for the Memorial Service for Adhip Chaudhuri
Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart, Georgetown University, Jan. 18, 2014

By Leo D. Lefebure

A Reading from the Gospel according to John (10:11-17)

Jesus said to them, “I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  The hired hand, who is not the shepherd, and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.  The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.  I am the good shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.  And I lay down my life for the sheep.  I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.  I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.  So there will be one flock, one shepherd.  For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

Today we gather to commend Adhip into the loving arms of God, who embraces us all.  I extend my deepest condolences to Joanne, Maya, Neal, and to all Adhip’s family and friends both here and in India and in Doha and around the world. 

In Adhip’s life, the Hindu and the Catholic traditions encountered each other  while Indian and American cultural traditions flowed together.  Adhip taught for over thirty years at Georgetown University; I came to know him at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University in Doha, Qatar, where he taught international economics while I was teaching theology.  Our colleagues and friends in Doha have asked me to communicate their condolences and sympathy to Adhip’s family and friends.  They are with us today in spirit and in prayer.  In his study of economics, Adhip was alert to the multiple interconnections between nations and within societies, and to the intersections between economic theory and the experience of daily life.  He had a special concern for those most vulnerable, which resonated deeply with the values of Catholic social teaching and of the Society of Jesus.  Adhip felt a special connection to St. Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missioner who came to India in the sixteenth century.

             Throughout his life, Adhip was a crosser of boundaries, an explorer who ventured into distant areas with his ever-inquisitive mind and his vigilant concern for those in need.  Wherever Adhip went, he remained rooted in the heritage of his native Bengal in India, where he was shaped by mentors such as Swami Prabhananada of the Ramakrishna Mission.  Adhip loved making connections for others.  When I was planning a trip from Doha to India in the spring of 2008, Adhip helped to make arrangements for my stay in Calcutta.  His gracious sister, Mrs. Shibani Gosh, greeted me with flowers at the airport and then escorted me to the Ramakrishna Mission in Gol Park in downtown Calcutta.  That afternoon, we went to the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission in Belur, along the banks of the Ganges River, where we met Adhip’s former mentor, Swami Prabhananda, who was then serving as the Secretary General of the Ramakrishna Mission.  We enjoyed an extended and animated discussion of interreligious relations.

             Adhip was a Hindu who was often surrounded by Christians and, at some periods of his life, by Muslims.  One day he came into my class in Doha and spoke to a Muslim-majority group of students about what the Hindu tradition meant to him.  The students were fascinated by his presentation. 

            The biblical readings that we hear proclaimed today also involve the crossing of boundaries, both within this world and between this world and the next.  They present the hope that the loving grace of God embraces all humanity, offering eternal life for all.  The Book of Wisdom was written by a well-educated Jew in Alexandria, Egypt, shortly before the time of Christ.  The author writes in the name of the earlier King Solomon addressing not only the Jewish community but “all those who rule on earth” (Wis 1:1), indeed all humankind.  The figure of Wisdom, personified as a gracious woman, symbolizes the loving presence of God in and through the entire universe, wooing humans, and promising rewards to those who seek and find her.  The Book of Wisdom recognizes that life often involves suffering, and the hope that we hear today that “the souls of the just are in the hands of God” is presented as encouragement to the entire human family, especially those who have gone through difficult times of suffering.  The Book of Wisdom interprets the sufferings of this world as trials that allow the true character of the just to shine forth, and promises that the just are now at peace.  Those who seek wisdom in this world and live in accordance with wisdom’s demands will find fulfillment in the next world.

            The Book of Revelation also is aware of the sufferings in this life, but it directs our attention beyond the difficulties of the present to the everlasting joy of those who are united to God.  In the gospel of John, Jesus says that he is the Good Shepherd who cares for his flock, and he goes on to state that he has other sheep not of this fold, whom he must also seek.  Many interpreters have understood these words as a reference to Jesus’s concern for followers of other religious paths.  When Pope Paul VI established the Secretariat for non-Christian Religions in the Vatican fifty years ago, in May of 1964, he quoted these words of Jesus, “I have other sheep, not of this fold,” and he applied them explicitly to followers of other religious traditions, including Hindus.

             Pope Paul visited Bombay in December of that same year on the first papal visit to India in all of history.  He met with leaders of other religious traditions, reflected on the deep relation between Indian religious traditions and the Catholic faith, and quoted a passage from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.  Pope Paul expressed his deep respect for Indian religions and culture as he stated:  “This visit to India is the fulfilment of a long cherished desire. Yours is a land of ancient culture, the cradle of great religions, the home of a nation that has sought God with a relentless desire, in deep meditation and silence, and in hymns of fervent prayer. Rarely has this longing for God been expressed with words so full of the spirit of Advent as in the words written in your sacred books many centuries before Christ. ‘From the unreal lead me to the real; from darkness lead me to light; from death lead me to immortality’ (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1, 3, 28).”[1]  These words of Pope Paul and the ancient Upanishad offer encouragement to us today.  In making his own the words of the ancient Upanishadic prayer, Pope Paul was recognizing a profound convergence of the Christian and the Hindu paths.  In both traditions, we often find ourselves caught in darkness and death, in a world that is not fully real.  Both traditions recognize that the ultimate, the divine, is beyond our concepts and ideas, but both trust that we can experience God’s grace in life-transforming ways.  Thus it is most fitting that we make this prayer our own today as we pray for Adhip and ourselves: “From the unreal lead me to the real; from darkness lead me to light; from death lead me to immortality.”

             In the gospel of John, Jesus presents himself not only as a shepherd but also as a friend.  Friendship is a value that unites the Hindu and the Christian traditions.  It was a great blessing to me personally to enjoy Adhip’s friendship and care when we were together in Doha.  The biblical book of Proverbs tells us, “A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity” (Prov 17:17).  The book of Sirach elaborates: “Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter: whoever finds one has found a treasure.  Faithful friends are beyond price; no amount can balance their worth.  Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; and those who fear the Lord will find them.  Those who fear the Lord direct their friendship aright, for as they are, so are their neighbors also.” (Sir 6:14-17).  At a particularly difficult period in my life, Adhip reached out to me with infinite understanding and concern and helped to guide me safely through the tempest to more peaceful waters.  For his friendship, I will forever be grateful.  In the gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples: “I do not call you servants any longer . . . but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (Jn 15:15).  The way God works in our lives is often through other people.  In my life, Adhip was both a shepherd and a friend.  In a profound sense he was a shepherd to me when I most needed shepherding; he was a friend to me when I most needed a friend.  To me, Adhip was a concrete expression of God’s grace.  For this I will forever be grateful to him.  In my life, it was through Adhip that God responded to the prayer of the Upanishad: “From the unreal lead me to the real; from darkness lead me to light; from death lead me to immortality.”

            Adhip once told me that he hoped that something from the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore could be read at this service.  I would like to close my remarks today by reading some lines from the ending of Tagore’s great poem, Gitanjali, where the speaker of the poem takes his leave of this world:

“When I go from hence let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.

I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light and thus am I blessed—let this be my parting word.

In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play and here have I caught sight of him that is formless. . . .

No more sailing from harbor to harbor with this my weather-beaten boat.  The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.

And now I am eager to die into the deathless.

Into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss where swells up the music of toneless strings I shall take this harp of my life. . .

In one salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet.

Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed showers let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee.

Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single current and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to thee.

Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee.”[2]

Amen.

[1] http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/speeches/1964/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19641203_other-religions_en.html

[2] Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Radford, VA: A & D Publishing, 2008), 41, 42, 43.

If Baba were sitting in the audience right now, the first thing he would do, after he wakes up with a loud snore, is lean in close to me and stage whisper, “Neal, is this memorial service labor intensive, or capital intensive?” Baba asked me this question so many times, especially on our car rides home back from elementary school. At age 10, he would gesture towards these huge construction projects with bulldozers and cranes, and I dutifully answered, “capital intensive.”

But Baba himself is a labor intensive man. One of my favorite Baba stories is about how his father changed Baba’s birth certificate so Baba’s legal age was a year younger than his actual age. My grandfather did this so Baba could spend one more year in the work force before retiring. Indeed, Baba worked incredibly hard to provide for his family, but could be weirdly humble about it. I sometimes question how Baba, who was at the center of attention in roomfuls of Bengalis and students, how he could have humility, but he once told me he never believed that he would be the guy who’d be at the top of his undergraduate class, or the guy who went to the United States for his PhD, but that’s what happened.

            Baba used that PhD to teach thousands of students. I was one of them. And let me tell you, the class I took with him was 20 years of labor intensive effort. Baba had me spend several nights looking through atlases, memorizing African countries and capitals, state nicknames, starting around 2nd grade. In Baba’s last few days when he was in pain and couldn’t stand easily, I tried to calm him down by giving him a geography quiz. Despite his obvious declining mental state, and despite having difficulty answering most of the questions, he only took milliseconds to tell me the capital of Ethiopia is Addis Ababa. I wince , remembering all the late nights doing math problems for him, but last year, I found myself telling friends that “a year without math is a year wasted,” which is so Baba I can’t believe I said it.  

            Baba put a lot of him into me. We both love to turn the bass up on songs. We both obsess over the movie Kill Bill. We both do the crossword in pen. We both dress sloppily, though I never come home with chalk dust on my shoulders. We watch Saturday Night Live together. When I was younger, I thought Baba’s yawn was the most obnoxious, foghorn-like noise and now my yawn is becoming the same. I snore now, though not as loudly as him. And every little similarity I have with Baba is a personal cause for celebration.  

            But what I hope I inherit most of all is Baba’s affinity for storytelling. Walking through aisles at Safeway, he could turn any product into an epic saga. His tuna fish/dolphin Mexico trade story is a staple in our household as well as in his classroom. He entranced me with stories of his youth in India, like when he killed a king cobra with a dinner gong and when he was given a ride home by God on a bicycle. His “Everybody Loves Raymond” joke was a watershed moment in our relationship.

When my friends inform me that I tell good stories, or that I’m a humorous guy, I savor this praise. I always see how Baba connected to so many people through his storytelling charms: He won over haircutters, Radio Shack employees, my teachers, and my friends with his amusing antics. After witnessing Baba’s continuous stream of teasing and kind-heartedness, I feel so proud to be like him. I am so proud and so honored and so privileged to be his son.

            So if Baba were here, questioning me in the audience, after knowing him for 20 years, I wish I could respond with something witty or a good joke. But I’d probably tell him what I’ve told him many, many times, “Go back to sleep, Baba. I’ll wake you up if you start snoring again.” Thank you. 

It was so hard to figure out what to say today because there was too much to say. There are too many stories to tell, too many jokes to retell. My father was always the center of the room, whether he was scolding you or making you laugh. There is too much to say because with my father, nothing was left unsaid.

My entire life, my father has taught me the importance of incentives. By using them on me. His goal was for me to learn something new every day, and he had no problem enticing me into doing so. For most of elementary and middle school, an A earned me $20. That ended when he started to understand how drastic American grade inflation was. He would bribe me to watch movies like Nicholas Nickleby with my friends instead of the newest Blockbuster hit. He persuaded me to memorize poems—that one worked pretty well: I’m Nobody/Who are you?/Are you nobody too?/Don’t tell/They’d banish us you know. But the incentives did not always create long-lasting knowledge. Where I most disappointed my father was in learning plant names. Amit has already mentioned his affection for botany. In an attempt to pass it on, Baba would point out every plant name in both English and Latin as he drove me around Arlington. When he noticed that I was not really catching on, he took extreme measures. He happened to be my soccer team’s coach and thus had a full car for the carpool. Before anyone was allowed to have their carpool snack, they had to name at least three plants, preferably in Latin. The first few days were a struggle, until I realized I could memorize three plants on the route we took every day. I can still tell you where those three plants are and what they are, but only those three plants.

Baba sought knowledge and wisdom his entire life, but was never afraid to bend the truth. It was hard to tell whether a story was slightly embellished or downright inaccurate because he always told it with so much gusto. One story stands out to me after a conversation with my brother. My father and I were planning to see the second Matrix movie one afternoon when I was in middle school. My friend, Mary, wanted to go to a movie with me but her parents preferred that she not an R-rated movie (justifiably so) and suggested we see Finding Nemo instead. I was talking about this with my brother earlier this week and learned that Baba had been telling everyone a different version of this story for years. He liked to tell people that he meant to take us to the Matrix, but accidentally dropped us off at “Finding Neo” instead. The boring truth had been buried beneath his more amusing anecdote. Sometimes the white lies he told were more for his own amusement than anyone else’s. In the blizzard of 1996, he found me running around the yard kicking snow. He decided to tell me that squirrels could track me by my footprints in the snow. I was a naïve five-year-old and instantly became terrified of both squirrels and snow. Around the same age, he told me that McDonald’s only put out the golden arches when I drove by and that they stood for Maya. It took me a few years to figure that one out, but it did make me feel pretty special.

My father’s most important role in my life was as a teacher. And by far the most important lesson he taught me was how to be a good person. More than anything, he loved the opportunity to teach students who had never been exposed to economics before. Partially because he could open their minds to new ideas and partially because it would mean they had never heard any of the economics jokes he had up his sleeve. That drive to teach sent him all over the world, touching so many lives. He could speak of nothing with more respect than bringing morality and ethics into the field of economics. He believed not just in the theories provided by Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, but in their views of the world and how we are all interconnected. One of his proudest moments occurred when Georgetown University invited professors to nominate an academic who had successfully incorporated ethics into his field of study. It came down to a nomination by the bioethics department and my father’s nomination of Amartya Sen, an Indian economist known for his work on welfare economics who happened to be a family friend and a professor at the Delhi School of Economics. Sen was chosen to receive the award and deliver the award. That was only one of many instances when my father demonstrated that, for him, economics and education were about much more than facts. He believed we have a responsibility to care for each other. One of my best memories of him is when he said he said he was proud that I was living ideal that out. I feel better knowing that his values and what he taught me will always be a part of me and all of the students that he taught.

From: Nirmalya Ghosh <nirmalyaghsh_50@yahoo.co.in>
Date: January 20, 2014 at 5:45:33 AM EST
To: Amit Shah <amitshahbos@gmail.com>, "meghna.chaudhuri@gmail.com" <meghna.chaudhuri@gmail.com>
Subject: Adhip
Reply-To: Nirmalya Ghosh <nirmalyaghsh_50@yahoo.co.in>

Dear Amit, Munni,   Chicku is nonsense. A friend who lives in London is here. Anju and Rajeev had invited him for breakfast along with some of us on Saturday morning. At the breakfast Chicku said to me that if were to write something about Adhip Munni would read it out at the Memorial Service. I do not have a net connection at home. She said that if I wrote it out and read it out to her over the phone, she would mail it. I got home around 1 pm, wrote a piece and called Chicku. No response. No response from Mezda either. Yesterday we went out for lunch with London friend. Chicku and Mezda were not there because of some other commitment. But I got to Boudi's house as early as I could to use Supriyada's net connection. For some reason I was unable to type the piece but could get to my mail box to discover that the service was over. However, the piece is given below. You may wish to circulate it to some people... Cheers, Bapi   I first met Adhip in July 1967. Adhip and I were batch mates. He went to a college which was on the other side of the road of the college that I went to. My 1sr year room mate, Abhijit Bose's school class mate Niaz Ahmed was Pulok Chatterjee's room mate. To escape from ragging, (I am not too sure how many of you here know what that means) Abhijit and I would go and 'hide' in Pulok and Niaz's room. It was in Pulok and Niaz's room that I first met Adhip. I think we hit it off from the first time we met. 1967 to 2014. It has been a long time.   During the past few months a lot of thoughts have been going through my mind. The great times that we had together. The times at the Coffee House playing 'dibri'. Amit may be able to explain what that was or may be still is. Flipping a match box into an empty glass placed at the center of the table from the edge of the table. I remember watching a Durrand Cup final (European football) with Adhip and we were beaten up by a huge sardar because we cheering for East Bengal and not Leaders Club. Leaders Club was from Jullundar and was led by Inder Singh, one of India's finest center forwards. Going to Kali Bari in Central Delhi on Kali Pujo to watch a Bengali film. The film ended at around midnight and we had to wait till 6am to get a bus  back to the University. It was early November, fairly warm during the day and a bit chilly at night. While we were waiting in the bus shelter we were shivering. There was an advertising board with the message painted on a plywood sheet. Adhip tore the sheets down. We burnt the plywood sheets to keep ourselves warm.   Adhip had a razor sharp brain. I remember him telling me that he was not in the first ten ranking of the higher secondary (school leaving) examination because he got 65% in geography. But boy, did me make it up. Topped the University (Delhi) in 1970. Adhip introduced me to people like Camus, Kafka, Sartre and Freud. And they were not even in the curriculum...   I do not remember the exact year, may be the late 70s, on one of Adhip's visits to Calcutta we went out for dinner with a few  people. At dinner Adhip said why don't we play a game.... between Bapi and me.. He set out a few parameters.... who is better looking.. who is whatever..whatever.. When it came to who is more intelligent it was Bapi. Adhip was shattered.. How can it bele Bapi... I am a Member of the Mensa Club.. I said to him, Adhip, I am in home territory and you asked only the women. All the three women present here are in love with me.. What did you expect... And then, very sheepishly I asked him.. What is Mensa Club and he told me and I said wow!! On his last visit to Calcutta, in December 2010, he taught a course at Calcutta Business School. After he finished teaching I drove him back to Parnashree and stayed back for dinner. We were sitting at the dining table and while he was drinking his decaffeinated coffee, I had a drink. Joanne was also at the table. I asked him.. Adhip you have achieved so much in life. What would you say is your biggest achievement. Adhip scratched his head for a while and said, ' Well, I guess it is beating Bishu (Biswajit Banerjee) and Subodh Mathur at the undergrad level. Bishu, Subodh, something that can go into your memoirs, when you write them!   On another occasion in Calcutta, when he was single, he said to me that he wanted to go out on a blind date. I said that I did not know any single women. Chicku, as usual came to our rescue. She asked two of her friends to go out with us. Poonam was one, I have forgotten the other girl's name. She lived next to Chicku's parent's home and her parents were friends of Chicku's parents. We had to get back at a certain time. But we got a bit carried away and returned well after the time we were supposed to have returned. While approaching Chicku's parent's home I see Adhip trying to get under the seat. A very irate Chicku's father was shinning a torch at us to see if the girl was alright.   It was in 1976. (someone please correct me if I am wrong). Chotoma had passed away. I was very poor. I still am. I drove a Herald (Indian equivalent of the English Triumph). Adhip was distributing invitation cards for Chotoma's shradh (Amit, Please explain) and I was driving him around. Suddenly Adhip shouted, Stop, stop..... His rubber slippers had fallen through the floor board, which had a big hole..!    I am sorry if all this is getting to be very boring, but there are two more instances that I have to narrate.   Una may remember this.. Una and Adhip walked into the service apartment that I lived in at the time. My music system was on full blast and I was listening to Doors. He laughed and said to Una, 'Didn't I tell you. Typical Bapi Ghosh apartment.. dirty clothes, books lying around and music'. He gave me Led Zepplin 3, which had Stairway to Heaven as one of the tracks. Adhip, I am giving it back to you for you to take that stairway...   Adhip, I know you are listening to me from up there and with your characteristic smile saying, 'Bapi you are a rascal...'   Adhip, I loved you. You were not my friend. You were my Brother.   Farewell Brother..... 

Adhip and Joanne 2012

Thanks to Biswajit Banerjee for archiving this treasure trove. Adhip sent these out via an e-mail routing list soon after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. This is a sampling. Bishu will post the rest soon.
_______ 

1On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:40 PM, <chaudhua@georgetown.edu> wrote:

I always wanted to be a Bengal Lancer
And ne'er an effete Tagore  dancer.
I am not in fright
But spoiling for a fight
With this goddamn lung cancer.

Adhip Chaudhuri

10/8/10

Now that  I have reached the half-way point
Of my chemo and radiation treatment,
I  believe that Virginia Hospital is the joint
That might spare us from any bereavement

Oct 11, 2010

This  morning Joanne and I got on Highway 66
To go and get my fourteenth radiation fix.
From the time we reach the hospital
It takes about thirty minutes  total.

October 13, 2010

 I forgot to announce that the last two poems were no longer limericks but part of a Sonnet. I have moved on to Sonnets because I was very impressed and inspired by Vikram Seth's "Golden Gate" which was written in that form of verse. Vikram Seth showed me how the verse form of Shakespeare and Milton could be effectively used to tell a great California story.
A Sonnet, as you already know , consists of fourteen lines. The first quatrain rhymes a-b-a-b ( "treatment"  with "bereavement"), the second a-a-b-b ('Highway 66" with "fix"). The third quatrain rhymes a-b-b-a, and then there is the couplet:-

Nowadays  it hurts a lot when I try to swallow.
It happens often when I eat solids,
But sometimes also while drinking liquids.
There does not seem to be a pattern  to follow.
But I have been given three medicines to select
The one that will push back this nasty side effect.

Adhip Chaudhuri(Oct 13)

October 15, 2010

Another week of treatment has come to an end
Oh Mama, am I really on the mend?
Thirty-three miners are free in the Atacama,
But will I be free of Squamous Carsinoma?

Adhip Chaudhuri (Oct. 15)

October 16, 2010

Today was  the service for my former colleague Bill.
He had fought lung cancer with radiation and chemo
And won,  seeming like a cancer beater's model, a demo.
I had heard all this, but not called him still,
Then, even though he had dealt cancer a deflection
On Tuesday he died from a pneumonia infection.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Oct. 16)

October 19, 2010

Today my Gran reading was 2.1,
And hence the Chemo got done.
As did Radiation number 20,
Which now feels like plenty.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Oct 19)

October 21, 2010

The oesophagus hurts badly
Every time I try to drink or eat,
All the medicines I have, sadly,
Cannot this side-effect beat.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Oct 21)

October 24, 2010

During this weekend recess,
I am sipping liquids through a straw
Downing solids after a thorough gnaw;
It is all a learning process.
With adaptation I hope to gain
On this stubborn oesophagus pain.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Oct 24)

October 26, 2010

I got my sixth chemo today,
Also the twenty-fifth radiation.
The last session is on Friday,
Cause for a mini celebration?

Adhip Chaudhuri (Oct 26)

November 7, 2010

Yes, yes, folks I am still very much alive
Went to see the chemo doc on Nov 5.
He said that the radiation doc did not reach
When he said that I could in Spring teach.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Nov 7, 2010)

November 28, 2010

Tomorrow I start the high dose radiation (Cyberknife) treatment. They will attack the mid-chest area and try to kill the remaining cancer cells around the trachia and the oesophagus. There will be five consecutive sessions, each lasting one to one-and-a half hour.

Meanwhile, my prayer is:

O Cyberknife! O Cyberknife!
Please, please save my life.
As I would if I wert the Cyberknife
And thou wert a man with cancer rife.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Nov 28th, 2010)

December 4, 2010

Hi folks,

The five sessions of Cyberknife ended on Friday. This was the radiation aimed at the all important mid-chest area. Each session involved about forty-five minutes of radiation by a machine which reminded me of the multi-headed monsters of the "Alien" movies. Even though the radiation itself took  forty-five minutes,  the total time I had to lie still varied from an hour to an hour-and-half. One day I had an itch on my right cheek with almost half-hour to go! On Friday, the last day, I turned on my MP3 player to a folder titled "16 hits of Bob Dylan" but soon found out that there was only one song in it : "It Ain't Me Babe" by Johnny Cash. I had to hear the song fourteen consecutive times!
The sessions have been leaving me very tired and fatigued, but no other after-effects. The next round of Cyberknife sessions will  be well into January.

Here's my poem of hope:

These cancer cells which dwell in my mid-chest,
Only know how to multiply and multiply
But do not like regular cells naturally die.
Hopefully they have mostly been fried and put to rest.

And the remaining ones which are still strong
Chemo will make sure they will not be so for long.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Dec 4, 2010)

January 11, 2011

Hello all,

Still recovering from the after-effects of the last Chemo on Jan 5th.

This is from "Emperor of All Maladies" and some research of my own:
The Persian Queen Atossa was the daughter of Cyrus the Great. In 522 B.C. Queen Atossa married Darius I, and they both ruled over the apex of the Persian Empire which included Babylon, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Baluchistan and Scythia (southern Russia). According to the Greek historian Herodatus, Queen Atossa led a very public life till she got a lump in her breast and thereafter disappeared from Darius's court "out of shame". Most, including Sid Mukherjee, believe that Queen Atossa contracted breast cancer.

The rest is from the Greek playwright  Aeschylus, "The Persians" (472 B.C). One of the leading Greek physicians of that time , Democedes, had been  enslaved by the Persians. Democedes offered to cure Atossa only if she would make sure that Persian expansion would be aimed toward Greece rather than east. Democedes, indeed, cured Queen Atossa by "excising" the tumor, and Darius I launched the Greek-Persian Wars which lasted for another one-hundred and fifty years.

The military might of King Darius
Was sent to Marathon and Thrace
Due to Queen Atossa's charm and grace.
Thus, were saved the kingdoms of the Indus.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Jan 11, 2011)

January 19, 2011

Here's a poem by W.H.Auden about a woman being diagnosed with cancer, a poem I found to be very poignant. Just as the doctor says in the poem, "Why didn't you come before?" is exactly what the doctor asked me when my cancer was confirmed.

Extracted from "Miss Gee" (1937)by W.H. Auden. I got the reference from Susan Sontag:"Illness as Metaphor".

Summer made the trees a picture,
Winter made them a wreck;
She bicycled to the evening service
With her clothes buttoned up to her neck.

She passed by the loving couples,
She turned her head away;
She passed by the loving couples
And they didn’t ask her to stay.

Miss Gee knelt down in the side-aisle,
She knelt down on her knees;
‘Lead me not into temptation
But make me a good girl, please.’

The days and nights went by her
Like waves round a Cornish wreck;
She bicycled down to the doctor
With her clothes buttoned up to her neck.

She bicycled down to the doctor,
And rang the surgery bell;
‘O, doctor, I’ve a pain inside me,
And I don’t feel very well.’

Doctor Thomas looked her over,
And then he looked some more;
Walked over to his wash-basin,
Said: ‘Why didn’t you come before?’

Doctor Thomas sat over his dinner,
Though his wife was waiting to ring,
Rolling his bread into pellets;
Said, ‘Cancer’s a funny thing.

‘Nobody knows what the cause is,
Though some pretend they do;
It’s like some hidden assassin
Waiting to strike at you.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Jan 19, 2010)

February 11, 2011

Now I am done with Cyberknife.
I tell you it was quite a strife.
But there can be great exultation
Like the Egyptian Revolution,
If it leaves no cancer cell with life.

Adhip Chaudhuri (Feb 11th, 2011)

August 21, 2011

We need a hazaar Hazares

I kind of like the new leader Anna.
He seems to have some amount of dharma.
We should stop being so daft
And shun the ways of graft;
Because corruption is not India's karma.

January 20, 2013

When we joined college, there were a lot of strictures as to what constituted superior quality humor. For example, defenders of the faith like Vinod Vyasulu and Lallu Ray would cite the following as "low-brow" rhyming:

“As I lay on the verandah

Along came a girl from Miranda.”

However, the other day while talking to my sister-in-law (Pradip’s wife) I decided those lines were a fine opening for a limerick. For example:

As I lay on the verandah

Along came a girl from Miranda.

I wished she would stay a while

But she left with a smile,

As if she had a hidden agenda.

May 4, 2013

Amit asked me to write a limerick commemorating Vinod Thomas' visit to Georgetown. here goes:

There is this pleasant, humble guy, Vinod

Made from a classic Kerela Christian mould.

Fighting poverty remains a task uphill

But Vinod did a lot of that in Brazil.

So much so, even  Doubting Thomas is sold.

Good afternoon,   I’m Amit,   a friend of Adhip’s.

Adhip and I were friends for 47 years. I want to remember him today through a few stories from a life full of joy, struggle, adversities, and success .

I first met Adhip in the second week of July 1967 when we were both “freshers,” or freshmen, at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. He was standing in the shower with water streaming over him, fully clothed, wearing a white full-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up haphazardly, black, cuffless trousers without front pleats (very stylish in keeping with the times) and flip-flops on his feet. This was  in the first week of a six-week period (now discontinued) known as “ragging,” where upperclassmen devised fun, often stupid, occasionally sadistic ways of meeting freshmen and vice versa.  Adhip and I discovered that we were both from Calcutta, in fact from the same neighborhood, and that his stepmother and my father were colleagues in social welfare work in that city. We were off and running till Jan. 11th, 2014, the last time I saw him and hugged him.

“And week of treatment has come to an end

Oh Mama, am I really on the mend?

Thirty-three miners are free in Atacama.

But will I be free of Squamous Carcinoma?”

and

“I always wanted to be a Bengal Lancer

And ne’er an effete Tagore dancer

I’m not in fright

But spoiling for a fight

With this [bleep] lung cancer.”

I salute you my friend, my comrade, my brother.

From Amit:

The three years that I spent at St. Stephen’s College, from the summer of 1967 to 1970, are the most memorable and life-defining years.  At 62, looking back to those years is fraught with the danger of cloudy nostalgia, little contextual understanding, and a filtering that shrouds the truth.

The truth that I know and what I’d share is:

I came from Calcutta (before it was Kolkata) and chose St. Stephen’s because Calcutta University seemed to be uncertain about whether its students could physically sit for exams and graduate. The constant hartals, bandhs, political posturings made it difficult to consider what I thought was a given almost throughout my life—studying. I hadn’t really heard of St. Stephen’s since there were very few students from Calcutta who’d gone to this institution. I did have a good friend in high school whose brother was at Stephen’s year ahead of me and he raved about Stephen’s and its mix of eccentric, extremely intelligent, urbane, and elite crowd. I, with a few others, notably Adhip Chaudhuri (1970, Econ Honors, topped the University) and his brother, Pradip Chaudhuri (1970, Chem) were the “Bong” (Bengali) brigade in 1967 at Stephen’s. We were a bit awed by being at this institution with the very privileged group of young people from all over India, especially the public schools such as Mayo, Doon, Sanawar, St. Paul’s and St. Edmund’s. There was even a fellow who’d gone to Harrow in the U.K.  We nicknamed him “Harrow” and to this day only remember him with that designation. 1967 was a year after the Bihar famine and the year that a peasant uprising took place in a small unknown village in north Bengal called Naxalbari. Many Stephanians who were senior to us had gone to Bihar for famine relief work and it had changed their lives forever (though we didn’t quite know how much till years later). Among them were Bunker Roy, Dilip Simeon, Arvind Das and Rabindra Ray. “College” in those days was essentially dominated by the fellows in “residence.”  There were about 150 of us out of a total student body of about 750, I think. We were insular, cocky, and dominated academics. Sports was dominated by “day scholars.” I was in Allnutt South, in room C-2. Many years later, I visited Stephen’s with my oldest son and not knowing that Allnutt South now houses only women, marched into the building and headed for my old room, only to be confronted by a somewhat perplexed woman, who asked how I’d gotten past the chowkidar! Our rooms were Spartan compared to now, I imagine. They had 2 charpoys, one desk, one chair, two sets of built in shelves. That’s it. We rented table fans in the spring and summer from the gyps. All else was improvised. Walls started to be decorated with flags stolen from Janpath and Rajpath ceremonies; imported car hubcaps were a mark of prestige. And so on. I can’t even remember having extra table lamps. “Ragging” was an established tradition and we unquestioningly dove in. Freshmen ragging lasted for a month. From middle of July when we started the semester to late August. We were perhaps lucky since nothing horrendous happened to us and we made friends very quickly with a lot of people. I met many lifelong friends in that period of time. Among them are/were: Falguni Sen (1970 Physics); Pradip Chaudhuri (1970 Chemistry), Banbit Roy (1970 Econ); Jayanta Bhuyan (deceased; 1970 History); Amar Kundu (my roommate for freshman year, 1970 English); Dhroova Saikia (1970 English); Ranjit Chowdhury (1970 English); Shahid Amin (1970 History); Prasenjit Duara (1970 History); Devajyoti Ghosh (1970 Econ); Brijeshwar Singh (1970 Econ); Yogendra Jain (1970 History); Partha Sengupta (1970 History); Biswajit Bannerji (1970 Econ); Pulok Chatterjee (1970 Econ), and Nirmalaya Ghosh (Hindu College, 1970 Econ) among others. First week at Stephen’s, I, with a bunch of other freshmen and some seniors, were invited to one of Pricipal Sircar’s dinners at his house. I think I was late getting ready, being delayed by some ragging incident, so I was frantically trying to find the house (I was a bit disoriented about the campus geography) and found myself bushwhacking through the brush behind the Principal’s house. I cut and scratched my ankles and arms. Sweating profusely, I showed up and enjoyed a terrific meal. Principal Sircar never asked me what had happened. My first year was a time when I went head-first into the life of St. Stephen’s. I joined the Student Council, became a contributor to “Onset” and “Katy,” joined student dramatics, and was a member of the committee for the World University Student group (which had the unfortunate acronym abbreviation ---WUS). Prasenjit Duara and I had to arrange the gatherings for foreign students (I think Mizos and Nagas were considered foreign students) and we ordered the best pastries we could find. There wasn’t the huge choice of societies, awards, and extracurricular activities that are student options these days. Adhip and I became Arvind Das’s campaign coordinators for our year for Arvind’s successful run for the college student union presidency. With its political tone, this was a watershed moment.  I had played cricket for my high school, so I thought that showing up at Kashmere Gate fields for cricket practice was a good idea. Partho Sengupta, who was also a high school cricketer, and I showed up. It took us all of 10 minutes to realize that we were competing for slots with folks who’d played for their states!  That was that. Hitchhiking was a common phenomena in Delhi of those days. And a ride to CP (Connaught Place) was readily available if we could position ourselves at the right spots on the university side of the Ridge. CP had one discotheque---the “Cellar”--- which was smoke-filled from tobacco and other leafy items and blasted Led Zeppelin and Fat Mattress to our delight. This was also the venue for meeting young women from IP (Indraprastha ) College, MH (Miranda House), LSR (Lady Shri Ram)---the only women’s colleges of repute at that time in the University. Hindu College, which was coed, didn’t seem to figure in our equations. On campus, we spent an enormous amount of time in the café having scrambled and mince and toast. I think we had coffee too, but I can’t remember that. Sukhia ruled the space outside the Café, under the tree, near Allnutt Gate. Selling barfi and cigarettes, he also became the “banker” for many, many students.  Recently, one of those who’d been the beneficiary gave Sukhia’s son a very large check to cover the initial loans plus the interest of decades! The library was well stocked but Spartan compared to libraries that we faced in the U.S. only a few years later. The trick to being in the library was to get the recommended books for papers before the “hog” (some earnest but selfish nerd) would get them all out and hoard them from the rest of his classmates. However, such moves were thwarted by me because I had become friendly with two students who were a year senior to me and shared their papers with me and I learned a whole lot from their scholarship ---Gyanendra Pandey (1969 History) and Dilip Simeon (1969 History). Stephen’s afforded me the opportunity to stretch my thinking and imagination. It allowed me to get involved in many activities that I might not have if it hadn’t been for the confidence I had as a member of the group at Stephen’s. We were insular, extremely well off and elitist but we also were, to a great extent, becoming aware of what the world around was like and why. Many of us struggled to make sense of that world and our place in it. Without St. Stephen’s College, we’d be different people today. Of that I’m sure.