Dear Dewang

A true Bhavanite and belonging to the Class of 1976, Dewang met his creator in his sleep on the night of April 12, 2001 in his hotel room in Sydney, Australia, where he had gone as a member of the Government of India's IT delegation.

Dewang was a qualified Chartered Accountant, Cost & Management Accountant who had also done extensive research work in computer graphics graduating in Computer Graphics from London in 1985. Six years later, in 1991 he was awarded the Computers Graphics Man of the Year in London for his work in the field of graphics. His passing away is a tremendous loss to the nation and the software industry in particular.

Dewang was associated with Nasscom for the past 10 years and headed it as its President till the cruel hands of death snatched him away from us.

In 1997, he was awarded the “IT Man of the Year” Award by Dataquest Magazine. He was also awarded by Computer World Magazine as 'Software Evangelist of the Year' for three years in succession in 1997, 1998 and 1999 and IT Man of the Year Award in 2000. In May 1998, Dewang was appointed as a member and spokesman of the high powered National IT Taskforce set up by the Indian Prime Minister to draft a National Informatics Policy. Recently Mehta was awarded the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award for the Year 2000 by Ernst & Young. Dewang Mehta was selected as one of the 100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow by Geneva based World Economic Forum in October 2000.

As Vice Chairman of the Internet Users Community (IUCI), Mehta pursued vigorously for the greater penetration and proliferation of the Net across the country. He played a key role in lobbying with the Government for allowing Indian companies to be listed on NASDAQ. Mr. Mehta was on the Government of India’s security Committee for clearing private ISPs to have their own International gateways. He was also on several Public sector and private sector boards. He was a member of the Andhra Pradesh State Planning Board, the Himachal Pradesh State Planning Board and on the Board of Governors of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). Dewang Mehta was also on the Governing Council of Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT).

A TRIBUTE TO DEWANG

Left to right:
Harish Bhasin, Dinesh Jain, Dewang Mehta, Rajiv Gupta, Pradeep Mehra, Rajan Kedia
B C Gurudutt, Kirti Uppal, Sujata (sood) Sahai, Jyoti (kapur) Soni, Krishan Goenka
Renu (kedia) Sharma, Dipak Awasthi, Amit Pandeya and Rakesh Jain

" It was a great shock of my life when I heard about the sad demise of beloved Dewang Mehta. He was one of the closest Bhavanites to me. I knew him since last 35 years as a very young boy as we were very much attached to his family.

His grand mother and my mother used to go to Haridwar every shravan month together. After the death of his father he used to come to me for all his personal matters for guidance and consultation. So to me I have lost my son. He was a great visionary, dynamic, determined and a firm person. During his short carrier, what ever he did he was highly successful. Its a great personal loss to me and to the Software industry in general. Let us pray to the Almighty for the peace to his soul ".

" As I sat next to a rather chubby chap who wore long knickers till his knees, I smiled out of nervousness at him. He smiled back readily. We were both from Gujarat, in the big capital city of Delhi, sitting at our "admission entrance test" at the Mehta Vidyalaya, Delhi. Since his surname was Mehta too, I thought he was the son of the owner of the school but alas he was not!

I showed him my Hindi answers and he, math's. The first day itself we had imbibed the Delhi survival trick of cheating! From that first day until nine long years of school we maintained this association until our lives branched out to differing avenues. He went to the Science Group (with all the smart folks like Smarty Srinivasan, Amit Pandey. T.Jayawardhan - all English types! - as I and Dewang joked in private).

Dewang lived very near to my colony. I was in new Rajinder Nagar and he in Karol Bagh. Consequently, our school-bus was the same too and as I boarded it first I would save a seat for him. Soon we were a tweedle-dee and dum do, a bit like Laurel and Hardy (he was plump, I a stick).

Dewang had ingenious ways of extending his area of influence, then as now. He soon appointed ourselves as "bus monitor". The idea was, all juniors to us must be nice to us to get good seats and those who occasionally shared Ramladdoo or Laljeera or chips or ice-cream got the privilege of sitting at window-seats. How our seniors did not notice this arrangement, or the teachers, escapes us but we never complained!

There were two or three boys who were so scared of us that out of good financial sense they started depositing their entire pocket-money with us! we had a whale of a time! Even my elder brother, Nandan, never understood how I had more pocket-money than him.

We two brothers had discovered gramophone with a vengeance (hailing from an artistic family we were truly into song and dance) and would often take our bicycles all the way to the HMV store in Karol Bagh. Occasionally, we'd take a diversion and drop in on Dewang and meet his parents who were very affectionate.

Those days we had a candy called Tutti-Frutti. It cost 10 paise and there were squarish photos of animals and birds in it of which if we collected the entire series of ninety, we could send it to the Parle company and get an album, a printed letter-head and some such goodies. Dewang and I formed a club of offering premium specimens at a premium! That he sometimes shortchanged me in the process never occurred to me as I was weak in counting and depended on his goodwill to show me his next maths paper!

Often, he would promise to coach me questions on the day of the exam and then fail to ride the morning school bus with me. I died many deaths.

Three deaths affected us while in school. First was our common friend Vinod Chaudhary's younger brother Pramod, who used to ride a red bike and lived near Nicholson Square, Goldaakhana area. Second was Sankaran sir's sis-in-law living in school who committed suicide (we didn't know what that meant then) and third was a neighborhood friend who left us his entire birds and animal "tutti frutti" collection. We had no heart to even touch it, leave alone benefit by it.

Dewang taught me about bees and birds and what they did! We were in 6th and while returning home one day he kept hitting his "letter-box" with a rubber band and kept saying "this portion will exspand" I thought he was referring to D.P.Mishra's lessons in Physics but it turned out to be Emani's biology lessons.

It was in 6th that Dewang's glee and my having failed at 4 out of eight subjects made me very hurt. I got the opposites of all his numbers: he got 90 in maths, I 09!. He got 62 in Physics, I 26. I was in tears because those are precisely the papers he had promised to show me answers of in exams. I had showed him Hindi, Sanskrit, English and something so those good marks added to his and he was beaming. It was the worst year for me in school. Fortunately, our class teacher was the terrible S.K. Mishra whom he fooled into believing I was an orphan so I had no parents to sign my report card!

From 6th to 8th, Dewang & I grew different ways but we sat together in class and on bus and met often. Once Mrs. Emani, Biology teacher, sent us to collect algae. We went to Buddha Jayanti Park with bottles in hand but who would do the dirty work? Dewang convinced me that I was taller so I could bend deeper into the pond. Of course I almost fell into it.

From 9th to 11th our course and life separated due to choice of the arts and science streams: he went to science, I to arts but a few common subjects brought us together as also common causes. Like the time we saw Jayawardhan smoking at that NCC camp in Nizaumuddin. We were appalled and held this over Tojo's head for long.

After school I and Dewang came together to collect our results. We went together to St. Stephen's to deposit our forms. There we were ragged so badly that for months we were afraid of college. I mustered courage and went once admitted but Dewang got a medical seat at AIIMS and never went for a month. When he finally showed up, his name had been struck off the rolls. That was a cut-off point in his life.

His hair fell within a month and he was depressed. He thought of doing several things and none of us knew what was the truth. Now he is no more so it does not matter anyway. The mark he has left in his field of endeavour, the friends he has won for the IT industry, the kind of response to the shocking news of his most untimely death more than compensates for little make-believes. We shall miss him and I feel a part of my childhood I had clung onto has been lost forever. In Dewang's death, our childhood has died too. Need more be said "?

" If not for the internet I would have never known that Dewang Mehta was a Bhavanite. I am extremely shocked and grieved by his death. All our prayers are with him and for his family ".

I am not a Bhavanite but I am close to Dewang "Sir". I was assisting him for last three and a half years and he use to call me 'Baccha', 'Behna' and 'Sweetheart's.

I have seen him closely and I can say that he was a true Bhavanite - loved all of you, remembered all of you and at times he also told me that the School used to close at 4.00pm, this Principle had slapped me once when it was not my mistake, we use to eat such stuff from outside school, a girl with this name became famous when we were in ...class and every guy was mad about her etc etc.

He was deeply attached to his School. I remember that last year, on request, he had taken time out from his very tight schedule to interact with the students of XI & XII standard of BVB. He was quite happy to meet all of them. He still remembered (as he had a real sharp memory) residence addresses of his many school mates. He was still in touch with some of them despite of his flying schedules. He was the only child and therefore his 'Bachpan' was more related to his school and friends. I feel that he was the man of great ideas, lots of dreams, creativity and immense activity..... We all just LOVE him!!!!

" This is a real loss to the country and for Bhavanites. He was one of the very bright Bhavanites ".

" It was indeed very sad to hear of the passing away of one of the brightest Bhavanites.....I had the opportunity of meeting him on a couple of occasions ...More recently in the Defence IT seminar....as usual his unassuming self...The nation as a whole will miss him....We do pray for peace to the departed soul ".

" On the evening of 14th April, I called up NASSCOM to find out about the funeral arrangements for Dewang which was to take place the next day. I had introduced my self as a Classmate of Dewang to one Mr. Rituraj who was taking my call. He took me by complete surprise when he told me that he knew I was residing in Chittaranjan Park, Delhi. It seems just a few days before leaving for Australia, Dewang & his Nasscom team had come to our locality with some work and he had mentioned about me. Dewang must have been gifted with a formidable memory and also must have cared for old friends considering that in the past 25 years we probably met twice and spoke over the phone once.

We were part of the back benchers of 1976 batch science stream which also included Amit Pandey , S.Srivats(smarty), T. Jayawardhan, Sanjay Dewan, and Ashwini Goel. Amongst us we had cornered the position of School Captain, Vice Captain, and four House Captains out of six. Ours was a very close knit group and we thought no end of ourselves rightly or wrongly. We were all young and so naïve. However, one single thing common about all of us, was our great expectations out of life. God has been kind to all of us. But none of us, I dare say even Dewang, had imagined that one of us would reach the height Dewang had. We are all proud of him.

Dewang was not an extrovert in the real sense. In fact he was quite serious in his approach though, friendly in nature. Over the years I watched on television the metamorphosis in his personality - he had truly become an icon.

Now that we have lost him for ever, I am reminded of a few lines of Longfellow which could easily be Dewang's epitaph - " heights by great men reached and kept, were not attained by sudden flight, but they , while their companions slept , were toiling upward in the night".

Following lines attempt to portrait Dewang Mehta's passion for Information Technology and India :

There is a road ahead of me. I have to walk miles. There are goals ahead of me. I have to make people smile

There is a road ahead of me. I have dreams to deliver. In this misery and sadness. I have to bring hope and cheer

I have mountain to climb. I have seas to cross. I also need to search the clouds. For, I have to find a better world

World which has education for all. Where health is no problem for big or small. World where distances don’t matter. And don’t come in the way of Dreamers and Achievers

May, the Journey continue. Till my Dream world is found. May, hope never leaves my Country. For, it has to become an IT Super Power

I used to see Dewang on TV /newspaper/magzines and used to feel very proud of the fact that here is a guy who makes us all proud that we are Bhawanites..

I used to talk about him to some old friends like Shyam Banerjee... I am not sure whether this a perfect tribute.... but I have written what I had in my heart...

Old Students Association of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, New Delhi

Dear Dewang - we miss you dearly and remember you

A TRIBUTE TO DEWANG