Last week when I went for work, office was abuzz with a news of disbelief and grief. A former colleague of ours, Allen J Mendonca, 49, passed away the previous night in his sleep.
I had never met Allen or heard about him before. But the kind of feeling my colleagues had for him surprised me. Their sad eyes looked through Allen’s pictures in Facebook and heaved a desperate sigh over the equally desperate comments his page carried that day.
I asked one of them: “Who is Allen?” He was taken aback that I didn’t know Allen but found a reason himself that it was just two years I’ve been in Bangalore. He told me: “Anybody who has lived in Bangalore for the past 10 years would definitely know Allen.”
Then he told me how as a reporter with our organization, Allen used to handle any subject under the sun with equal ease and his write-ups becoming better day by day. He told Allen could write anything from crime, politics, IT to sports and business. My other colleagues too shared their information on Allen to me: He even composed jingles, acted in plays, wrote movie reviews, composed and sang music, and played the guitar. He even starred in a film.
Still what prompted me to write this was the place he found in everybody’s heart even days after his demise. Nobody ceased talking about Allen, very often ending in philosophies of life... when I really felt bad that I’ve never met him or knew him when he was alive. But I discovered some people will never die.
