Remembering my childhood buddy – Jayesh Somaiya

I recently lost my childhood friend Jayesh Somaiya. It came as a huge shocker – totally out of the blue when Mahipat sent me a message on Facebook and broke the news that he had passed away a week earlier due to multiple organ failure resulting from heart issues, complicated further by excessive weight and heavy smoking.

Jayesh and I studied together from fourth grade until the twelfth. His elder brother Girin was a few years my senior, and Paras, his younger brother was a few years my junior. Two of his cousins, Atul and  Bhushan, also studied in DC. He was always smiling, laughing, and being jovial. I never remember seeing him getting upset or hassled about anything. Never a great guy in studies, he was always a good friend. Teachers often got angry at him for creating ruckus in the class. In fact, Mr. Bawa, our English teacher, used his name in one of the class English plays to evoke laughter from the crowd. He lived in Palasia back then, and I’d often stop by his place when riding my bicycle  back from that area. We’d sit in his patio and gossip, and sometimes his dad would join us and would share jokes and life events. The Somaiya family owned a couple of petrol pumps and transport business.  

Around the time we were in 8^th or 9^th grade, we started to learn swimming at the Kamala Nehru Park Swimming pool. In the summer vacations, Sandeep Dalal, Sandeep Kolatkar, Sarvesh Garg, Jayesh and I would meet at the pool around 3 PM. My sister and I were learning how to swim back then. Jayesh and Kolatkar were seasoned swimmers and would swim laps. He’d often stop in the shallow end and give me tips and help me swim. I distinctly remember the time when my sister, who is about 5 years younger than me, was also standing in the shallow end and suddenly slipped. We all thought she had suddenly become brave enough to start dipping her head under water, where as in reality, she was just trying to regain her footing and stand back up. It was Jayesh who quickly swam past me and pulled her up, helping her stand back. He made sure she was ok, before coming over to me, said something funny, laughed and went back to his laps.

He always loved friends. In the seventh grade, we all went trekking to Choral, Patal Pani and Kalakund with our Physics teacher, Mr. N.C Suley. Mr. Suley had just joined our school that year, and when he went to marry the girl he had loved (she was his student in College, where he was a TA to the professor), Jayesh and Amit Khurana openly made jokes at his expense. On the trek, he was so relaxed there. I still have his snap sitting in the Choral River with Sudhir and Thakur. We ribbed him a lot about that snap, and he took it all in good stride, laughing at himself along with us. That same year, our close friends Pankaj and Pushpendra ended up having a rift and refused to speak with each other. Jayesh went out of his way to try and get them back together. He’d push them into the same team in soccer, basketball and was very thrilled to see them playing together. He’d often come to me and tell me what happened in the game and was really thrilled when they became friends again. That was typical of Jayesh.

Every time I visited Indore, he’d be amongst the happiest guys to come and meet me at every get together of the Daly College batch mates. I remember when I was visiting India in 2005, he came and hugged me when I met him at Parikshit’s house. In Dec. 2009 the last time I visited Indore, we also had Balvinder Singh visiting from Malaysia, Rajeev Sharma and Manoj Shekhavat were visiting from the US. Naim Khan was also meeting us after a nearly 25 years. There was a group of about 15 friends that got together with their families. We met in Velocity Complex, at a restaurant owned by our friend Sudhir. As soon as I entered, Jayesh came over to hug me. I noticed he had become even bigger, but so had his smile. He had lost more hair, but none of his joviality and humor. He was in peak form that day, so thrilled to be back with most of his childhood friends. I told him that he was starting to look like his dad – and in his typical fashion he responded, “Yaar, at least that means I am my dad’s son” and burst out laughing. That was typical Jayesh – at his best.  We all laughed, joked, drank, ate and remembered the good old days.

None of the get togethers with friends will ever be the same without Jayesh. We will miss him a lot and every meeting of Old Dalians will always bring his smiling face and jovial nature to our memories. Rest in peace my friend … I am sure you are keeping everyone smiling wherever you are.