D'Sean Sumwashe : An Eulogy

My close friend of nearly seven years, D'Sean Sumwashe passed away last Friday. He had some kind of an infection in his brain which affected his entire system. He had undergone surgeries for the last one month, but doctors were never optimistic and the result was inevitable.

D'Sean started of as a colleague but soon we became Brothers in Arms. We were in a startup and long hours mixed with common interests meant more time together and though we got on each other's nerves quite a few times, there was always the sense of camarederie. We wrote our first SIP stack ( at that time it was 2543 and rewrote it for 3261) together.

I was thinking about D'Sean's influence while I was driving to work, and he has left quite an impact. Indians in the US, generally tend to stay together as a flock and as a result are not exposed to the American culture as much as you would expect. I was like that for the first couple of years till I met D'Sean. He was an African American and introduced me to the world of David Chappelle and Bernie Mac. The two of us watched 'Undercover Brother' atleast five times and discussed the effects of the 'Man'. D'Sean was mostly drunk during these conversations :)

D'Sean was a Techno addict and you could sense his arrival to work almost a mile away. His blaring music would make our office glass vibrate and you knew D'Sean had arrived. He was my foosball team-mate and our goal everytime would be to shutout an opponent but ended up trying to avoid a shut-out. We actually improved as days went by; I always played offense and he played 'D'. I used to call myself the Kansas City offense and he was the Tampa Bay 'D'.

Though he did his college in Florida, Gainesville, his heart was with the Seminoles ( Florida State). And everytime FSU played Miami, it was heartbreak time for D'Sean. The wide lefts and wide rights (you need to have followed Seminoles-Hurricanes college football games to know what I am talking about) used to leave him furious at the end of these games. We all knew not to talk football after the FSU-Miami weekend.

Talking about football, it was D'Sean who roped me first into Fantasy Football. Till that time, Football was just another game. After that it became a religion. It was so addictive that even after I came back to india, I still followed the games online all night long.

Though I returned to India, four years ago we were in touch regularly and this is a big personal loss. Buddy, we will all miss you, but be rest assured, you will be in our memories. So long pal..