The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 3)

Yesterday, as I cried in Dominique’s arms, he said, gently, Naren was a father figure for you.

Naren was a father figure for a lot of people in the industry.

What he was to me was more than that.

Naren was my friend.

At the first dinner that Naren, Vinita, Dominique and I had at our house, we had a discussion about what are the ingredients of a successful relationship.

Naren and Vinita married young, at a time when such power couples were rare. They made it work effortlessly. We were sharing notes about marriage.

Naren liked my analysis. Love, trust, respect, communication and commitment constitute a successful relationship. Not just marriage. All relationships.

Naren and Vinita had all of those ingredients in abundance.

Naren and I had all those ingredients in abundance too.

And it is those ingredients that have enabled Dominique and me to go through extraordinary challenges over our 18 years together.

If you are a strong, talented, ambitious woman reading this, and you are still searching for a life partner, look for a man like Naren. He was a real connoisseur of strong women.

Unfortunately, men like him are still, in the twenty-first century, remarkably rare.

On March 16, 2020 the Bay Area locked down. Our world entered the Covid era.

Before this, on February 22, 2020, Naren, Vinita, Enrica, Pierluigi, Kyung, Wayne, Dominique and I gathered for a dinner party at our house. We all had been traveling a lot, and hadn’t seen one another for a few months.

Naren and Vinita had a different kind of adventure meanwhile. Vinita was learning to ride a scooter, and in San Francisco, had been in a serious accident. She ended up in the ICU with a head injury. At this dinner, they shared with us the details with characteristic humor. We were all chiding Vinita for this unnecessary recklessness.

Underneath his lightness, I could tell, Naren was shaken. He had, at least for a few moments, had to visualize life without Vinita.

And he knew that I knew that.

This segment is part 3 in the series : The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta
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