Memories of Kishan

Memories of Kishan

Initiating this thread to express your memories about https://fsmk.org/press/Adieu-Kishan/. We can think of handing over the collation of such memorials to his beloved one in future.

Kishan was probably one of the smartest people I have met specially given his age. He was always interested in learning, exploring and having a better understanding of everything around him - technically as well as philosophically. There were no moments where he would take anything at face value, he would critically think about it and then accept the same if it made sense to him. If it didn’t, he’d straight up tell you why it didn’t make sense. He had knowledge about topics that many of us wouldn’t have heard about ever, and that meant there was always something to talk about and learn from him.

Couple of us who spent time with him apart from FSMK hours knew the fun side of Kishan as well. His narrative style, of the stories from his past, was something that made us all laugh through the late nights, and his place was always welcome for any of us to visit and hang out. He would often display his appreciation for the small innovative things that most of us would have never taken time to notice. The child like innocence to learn and appreciate is something that will be missed sorely.

His demise is a great loss for our community and the world. The world has lost one more light.

My condolences to his family.

Kishan was one of THE smartest people I’ve ever known. He’s taught me/us a whole lot of things. He knew a whole lot of things and everytime you spend time with him, one was sure to learn something.

I can’t remember a single moment when I was with him and was bored. The kind of gags we pulled together (a bunch of us) in the fsmk camps were pretty much the best memories from the camp.

I remember both of us flipping about possibly flunking in our 3rd year of Engineering and passing around notes and important questions…

Who knew the last time I had veg wrap in kabab mahal was going to the last time I’d meet him… I still can’t digest the fact that he’s not around anymore. I owe him so much in terms of what I’ve learnt. He was an extremely fun person to be around and always keen to learn. He’ll be missed. We’ve lost a gem of a person and a genius.

My condolences to his family and everyone close to him.

I’ve been trying to think about what to say, and I’m still not sure I can do it justice.

As others have mentioned, Kishan was smart, he was hilarious, but above all else, he was a friend. I don’t know how many times I have asked him for help, I just don’t, and I can’t remember a single instance he said no. I consider myself extremely lucky to have seen his more professional side, through FSMK, as well as to have known him personally. I’ve also lost count of the number of times I crashed at his place, all the times we went down YouTube rabbit holes, the times we met for a snack or a meal. I was backing up all my conversations with him, and it hit me that for a long time it was a constant; we’d always have something to talk about, to joke about.

We’ve lost someone special, an extremely skilled and talented individual whose heart was always in the right place, whose personal philosophies and stances were consistently well reasoned, and who was a crutch for those who knew him and relied on him.

Met Kishan during the initial days at FSMK and I knew from day 1 that I wanted to be Kishan. He was smart, talented, extremely skilled, very helpful and immensely kind. There is not one instance of Kishan refusing to help me. He ALWAYS had answers. ALWAYS. His answers were always thorough, but not intimidating. Kishan was very precise. He used to say “choice of words matter”, I didn’t get it completely then, I get it now. Often, when I asked him a question, he would ask 5 more clarifying questions. It was fascinating that how someone could know so much about so many different things.

We became friends through ranting about the terrible options of a service-provider or about the sad state of affairs wrt to what systemd is or some bad bluetooth driver. He was a hacker in every sense of the work. My first Arch installation was at Kishans place, knowing that he would save me if I killed my system. It was a treat to watch him work. I remember being fascinated by watching him work with docker and ipTables. He was a ninja!! Over the years we had many more late-night sessions of “who wrote this apache config” or “you can optimize this script by doing this”. Kishan’s validation meant the world to me.

He always gave nice feedback about my terrible jokes. Never said they were not funny. He had his own share of jokes. We couldn’t figure out time to meet for “vada-pav”. We did start learning LISP together. He was very excited. :slight_smile:

I can not overstate the impact of this person on who I am today, both personally and professionally. You were a great friend! I look up to you. I wanna be you. I will miss you.

Farewell.