RIP Tridib Roy Chowdhury

 My friendship with Tridib goes back a long time, three and a half decades, almost. There were seven Indians who joined graduate program of Computer Science at UMCP that year. That was perhaps a record. We stayed in the same apartment complex, and I went to his apartment pretty much every day, post dinner (some times pre dinner as well, when we didn't feel like cooking at our apartment). Working in the night is part and parcel of a grad student's life, but the university shuttle stopped in the evening. One of his apartment mates had a car and went to department regularly in the night.

He was glad that everyone else was going to office in the night. He was the only one who had a steady "Significant Other" in our group, and he wouldn't mind having some privacy when he chatted with Anu for hours at length. But before we went to office, we would chat about everything under the sun, and we would find solution for every problem. He was extremely jovial, and had the ability to laugh at himself. Under any circumstances, he was a great company.

28 Oct. 1989: Diwali dinner at our apartment. Anu was an accomplished classical singer, and Tridib, let us just say, was learning.

After a year, he decided to join a startup on the campus. The startup idea was in its infancy, but Maryland campus actually had many startups at that time. He worked on scanning documents, and storing them with a good database at the backend and a front-end GUI for retrieval. GUI was a new concept then and he would work day in and day out. He was capable of putting in many hours of work than even graduate students like us. But that meant no time for exercise. So I recall we decided to participate in the Terrapin Trot Road Race, a 10 mile run organized by UMCP. Anu wanted to run and he couldn't say no. So, there were exactly four Indians in the race, and three of them finished. Basically, we had lots of fun.

4 Nov 1989: After Terrapin Trot Road Race

The graduate student days were essentially a long party time with the side effect of finishing a PhD thesis. And Tridib was always a part of those parties. Of course, some times, they will ditch us, like on new years' eve.

Dec 31, 1989: They dropped by for a few minutes to let us know that they had better plans.

After about three years of working in the startup, Tridib was getting bored. He was finding the work repetitive. For every new device that comes in the market, he would have to write a device driver. And he had a lot of ideas on how to take it beyond. He was always full of ideas. And he decided to move to India, do a startup of his own this time.

Apr 30, 1990: The last supper before they moved to India.

 He started the company by the name, "STEX", and initially based it out of Kolkata. He had added the OCR technology to scanning, storing, database, etc., that he had worked on till now. The OCR was absolutely state of the art, and one day when I visited him in Kolkata, he told me that he is challenging banks that they can give him any old, torn check, he will scan it, and give out information about the amount, name, account number, etc. He was way ahead of his time. He was featured on the front of an IT magazine, I forget which one. Banks weren't interested in the beginning, but he didn't give up. Slowly banks started using more and more technology solutions and he was ready to help them. He managed the company for 16 years before it was acquired by 3i infotech. He also moved to Bangalore during this period.

They had Akhila, and when we were expecting, he called me one day to give me his Gyan, and I still remember that. He said that child birth is the only occasion when we don't ask God for anything special. We want just an average child, and in his own jovial sense added, we don't want a child with an extra eye or an extra arm. On all other occasions, he said, we pray to God to give us something more than what others have, but not at the time of child birth. How true.

We kept meeting each other. When I was at IIIT Delhi, he was at Adobe and while he preferred to take morning flight from Bangalore to Delhi and evening flight back home (which would mean being awake for 20+ hours), once he agreed to come the previous evening and drop by at our home. Last year, we organized a mini get-together of Maryland gang at Bangalore, and he was his usual jovial self.

13 July, 2019: Bangalore mini get together of UMCP group

When Covid made it impossible for all of us to travel and meet each other, he nudged all of us (UMCP gang, again) to have a video-conferencing session. His enthusiasm was infectious. And what fun it was. We had planned it for an hour, but it lasted more than two hours.

9 May 2020: So much fun on a Zoom Call

And he had a golden heart. In July, he noticed that I had posted on social media seeking philanthropic funds from PEC alums and friends to help students at PEC whose parents had either lost jobs or had reduced incomes due to Covid. He not only made a contribution himself, he forwarded the posts to others when he had had no connection with PEC whatsoever.

So when I heard day before yesterday that he is no more, I couldn't believe it. I guess, no one could believe it. No one wanted to believe it. Someone, so energetic, so full of life, with strong ethics, such a helpful person, who would want him go. There is hardly a positive characteristic that you can't apply to him. But God needs such people too, I guess.

Rest in Peace, dear friend. You will always rule our heart. We will always miss you.