Respects for Ashok

[Guest guest]

Woods are lovely dark and deep, He kept his promises and earned his sleep"

I join rest of the  World to pay my last respects to Ashok Pillai. I am sending this a not only in my desire to pay my respects to my friend and comrade, but rather in my need to do so. Ashok was the very essence of compassion, of duty, and of a style. Throughout the world, where ever he had worked he had left an indelible remark as a symbol of selfless humanity. All over the world he was involved, he spoke  for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very Indian man who transcended nationality - someone with a natural nobility continue to generate his social justice through his activism.

Ashok, today is my chance to say thank you for the way you brightened our lives, although God granted you but a half a life. We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all. Only now that you are gone we truly appreciate what we are now without and we want you to know that life without you is, very, very difficult.

I, as your friend , have despaired at the loss of  you, Ashok, and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded me the strength to move forward.

You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities, including your weakness that you not need to be seen as a saint. Indeed, to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your wonderful mischievous sense of humor with a laugh that bent you double through all your crisis. Your greatest gift was your intuition and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what underpinned all your other wonderful attributes and if we look to analyze what it was about you that had such a wide appeal we find it in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives. Without your God-given sensitivity we would be immersed in greater ignorance about those who have been deply affected by HIV/AIDS in the subcontinent and through out the world . Above all I give thanks for the life of man whom I was ever so proud to be my friend, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Ashok, whose beauty both internal and external will never be extinguished from my mind.

Jet' Amme Ashok

"blue birds"

E-mail: bluebirds1979@...>

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