Message from Nandeesha\'s wife
01 Apr, 2013

TO
ALL THOSE WHO LOVED NANDEESHA AS MUCH AS WE

(ADITYA AND MYSELF)
 

This is for someone who is here and yet is not here!

My son and I are grateful for the love and support of those who stood by us during our most difficult time. My husband probably belonged more to all those involved with fisheries than to me and our nine-year-old son Aditya. This was the proud feeling I got from the overwhelming outpour of love, belongingness, concern, and affection from the Fishery fraternity when they came to know that he had suffered a heart attack on the 23rd of Nov and then finally from the profound outpouring of grief when he passed away on 27 Dec., 2012.

Nandeesha was a visionary and a dangerous optimist at every stage of his life, but a man in a great hurry to get things done. On hindsight, I feel now that he probably had some inkling that he had little time on his hands. Or perhaps he simply wanted to achieve great many things for fisheries. We felt, at times, that some of the things he wanted to achieve were far too ahead of his time or not consistent with the ground realities of what could and what could not be achieved. But as anyone who knew him will tell you, he never believed that a thing “cannot be done”.

This much I can tell you with certainty—he was a straightforward, hard-working, and honest person to the core. He was also broadminded, selfless, and generous to a fault. “True to his character, he tried to create a corruption-free environmenteverywhere he worked and went. In doing this, he always insisted on calling a spade a spade, even when it may have been easier to keep quiet. I personally tried to persuade him many times to express himself more diplomatically, but his personality would not allow him to modify the truth in any way for the sake of decorum.”

Prof. H.P.C. Shetty (his mentor and idol in life), in his memorial address to his student, said that Nandeesh was like a candle who burnt from both ends, so got extinguished early in life. He was obsessed with his work-which was beyond a point of no return. Nandeesh wanted to leave behind a legacy of sustained excellence —which I hope he did through his body of work for more than 3 decades. He wanted visionaries to lead institutions and he wanted institutions to impart quality education. The finality that the death of the spouse brings is profound. It took my breath away. There simply is no way to prepare for that. I hope to raise our son Aditya and help him to grow up and lead his life through the path shown by his father’s sincerity, hard work, dedication, persistence and fearlessness in leading one's personal and professional life.

Nandeesha was truly humbled to receive the vice-chancellorship from the Tamil Nadu Government for the Tamil Nadu Fisheries University and I personally want to thank all who recognized his contribution to fishery science at various stages of his career. I am really grateful for the support and motivation he got from his teachers, friends and various other personalities who inspired him to serve more.

Finally, I would like to thank you all for the love and concern you showed towards him when he was ailing and for the prayers that gave him the strength to go on for 35 days and kindled our hope that he might make it through—but God had planned otherwise. So though Nandeesh is not with us physically, his thoughts and deeds are there to guide us through these difficult times.

I continue to live with his famous line, “everything happens for good”.

Rajeswari Dayal B