Coleen P. Porcher

When I heard that Gautam had died, I did not believe it. I did not want to believe it. As I listened to my friend Lisa relay the news, I had one of those out of body experiences in which I am hearing what she is saying, yet the mind slowly absorbs the information. It has only been seconds, yet it feels like minutes. I begin to cry. Not my Gautam! My daughter, hearing my
sobs, approaches to find out what is going on with Mama. My mind travels back to when we first met.

Gautam is wearing, light blue, ratty jeans and a thin black jacket. Maybe it was a windbreaker. He and a friend are walking across what Vassar students affectionately call the quad—a quadrangle of four dormitories. Our eyes make
four. I am struck by how handsome he is. I smiled and said hello and he says hello back. It was our first few months of college, and I found many of the students seemed cold and unfriendly, or too friendly and superficial. We had not been introduced, but he had smiled, conveyed genuine warmth and said hello. To me, that is the essence of Gautam. Please forgive me if I speak of him in the present tense because in my mind, when people we love die, they are still living within us. And in that sense, to me, they are never gone. To be frank, I am still in the emotional process of accepting his death, so I
may shift tenses. Please forgive me.

Some time soon after that day, it may have been days, or a fortnight. I don’t remember exactly, I was visiting my friend Lois Mair, in Raymond dormitory. Lois was from Jamaica also, and she was playing a tape with the latest "sounds" from Jamaica – this new thing called Dancehall—when we heard
banging outside the door and what sounded like loud grunts. Our curiosity won out. We opened the door and there was the person who had smiled at me. Gautam Sundaram and Peter Hamady were playing soccer in the middle of the
hallway on the third floor of the dorm. It looked like so much fun.

Inasmuch as we were two very righteous Jamaican sisters who had complained about inconsiderate neighbors and the like, we invited ourselves to the game. It was Peter and Lois against Gautam and Coleen. They won. As strait-laced
as I could be sometimes, he was one of the few people who could bring out the child in me and make me laugh at myself. If anyone else had teased me the way he did it would have angered me. But with his sort of smirk, half giggle and half-raucous laugh and inevitable slap on the back, when he made fun of Lois or me, made it difficult to remain angry with him about anything.

In that first year of Vassar, when the loneliness of not having my grandmother or great grandmother around, when the absence of home, of things Jamaican would sometimes become so intense, becoming friends with Gautam eased the transition. An immigrant himself, he understood what it felt like
to be different, to be in limbo. He had lived in the States a long time and seemed fairly well assimilated. But his past gave him access to and an understanding of other realities. He was a brown man … he would sometimes jokingly refer to himself as this "brown boy" who seemed relaxed and comfortable in his skin, and in the predominantly Caucasian environment that
was Vassar. Better yet, while in it, he could step outside it look at it and really see inside and underneath the masks people wore. I was intrigued. At the same time, he reminded me very much of my younger brother, Junior, with his ready laughter, playfulness, many girlfriends, and confidence sometimes bordering on arrogance.

Lois and I loved to cook-- especially Jamaican food. Gautam and Peter soon became our occasional dinner guests. Sometimes on Saturdays, after Lois’ Sabbath, she was a Seventh Day Adventist, we would drag Gautam with us to the
Jamaican store in Poughkeepise … the only one at the time. We would then go to the Edwards supermarket before we would head back to the kitchen where we would often make our national dish … ackee and saltfish. We could never get
Gautam to say ackee right, but over time, he got better. Since he couldn’t cook, he contributed to the fare by providing transportation and our putting him to work to chop up the seasonings. It was then that he would talk about his mother, and his sisters. You could hear the love in his voice. And it
was at times like those, that I realized how much he too missed his family.

Gautam loved to talk. I can hear him in my head saying: "You know, I have the gift of gab." What he did not say, but demonstrated, was a love for experiencing people. When we ate together, or if he stopped by to visit, he would often ask probing questions about Jamaica: What it was like there; how
it felt to be here. We soon found out that he and Peter planned to go to Jamaica for Spring Break. We relished telling them where to go, what to do, and what to eat. Most of all it felt good to share as one human being to another. We felt disappointed when they did not both come back loving it, 
as we did; but, that was all right. At a time when campuses where split into liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican, Black against White, straight against gay, I am struck now by our friendship. We disagreed, and often, but were able to do so with civility.

We sometimes quarreled. Often about politics. Those fights were intense. When two intense people discuss politics, watch out. But all this is necessary for true friendship. Once I asked him why he did not seem to associate with other Indians on campus. In response, he waxed philosophical about the balkanization of the world. He thought that the world would be a better place, a more peaceful place if people could love whom they wanted and if there was intermarrying across all class and ethnic lines. We never argued about there being one human race. On that we agreed. Thank God!

When I went to Kenya and Costa Rica for my Junior year abroad, we wrote. I wanted him to write back, but I did not really expect it. He wrote at least twice, which was good for Gautam. When I got back, we had not had time to call and check in on each other when he saw me across the lawn and yelled, "Coleen Stevens you Rasta blaster." Long before I decided to stop processing my hair and wear dreads he was calling me a Rasta. He must have seen it coming. At other times he would yell, "Coleen, you bloodcloth," as a greeting. I was thoroughly amused, but would look around just to be certain there was no other Caribbean person in the vicinity that would hear him. He would give me that smirk of his and laugh, because he knew what I was doing. Then I would say to him, "Shhh Gautam, you know that’s a bad word. I know I
use it liberally around you, but you mustn’t yell it out in public like that." It would only make him laugh more. He would slap me on the back and just say: "Oh, Coleen. You know I love you."

Gautam possessed an elastic mind and an embracing persona. We connected as much as we did because he was very accepting and non-judgmental . In many ways, I both admired and envied him all that and his laid-back approach to life. While he would just talk things as they came and live in the moment. I was the consummate planner. A part of me wanted to approach the world as he did.

Gautam was like a brother. A special one. He was in a category by himself. There were times when we had not talked for weeks, but I would feel his presence so intensely, that I knew he was in town or that I would hear from him. It was Gautam who made me aware of what I now refer to as the witch in me. With us every subject was open. We knew when the other was happy, depressed, confused, had relationship troubles. You name it. Our twenties were difficult times of trying to find ourselves and figure our which path to
take. In all this, we knew we could count on each other to be completely real, even if it sometimes hurt.

We are celebrating Gautam’s life. In continuing with the honesty of our friendship, I cannot help but share with his spirit that I wish the last eighteen months had been different. Soon after I had my second child, sleep deprived and grumpy, we spoke briefly. Before I knew it, consumed with being
a new mother, almost a year had passed, and we had not spoken. Gautam was one of the first people I talked to when my first baby died, and I remember how safe I felt sharing with him, all that I had gone through, how painful it was. He listened, did not offer any platitudes and gave me great comfort. Gautam, you have taught me so much.

My own child four years ago. Having experienced the death of a child, having a living child now, being a mother myself, I ache for his mother and his father … his sisters. I can appreciate the depth of their pain. Even as we celebrate Gautam’s life, the joy he brought to so many of us, his passion, his intensity, his zest for life, everything about him … in celebration who he was, I am also trying to accept that he is no more. I will miss you Gautam Sundaram, but I also know that you are with me, with us, always.