The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 7)

After we received our vaccines this year, we started getting together in person once again. One August evening, we spent five hours on Naren and Vinita’s lawn. Conversation flowed, tumbling effortlessly from topic to topic.

We had originally only planned for a socially distanced, masked, one-hour of catching up.

We ended up still physically distanced, but in a five-hour intoxication of serious and frivolous conversational intimacy.

Naren was good friends with Rajat Gupta, a former CEO of McKinsey. Rajat experienced a tremendous fall from grace in an insider trading scandal some years back. While he was previously celebrated in the Indian community, most of his friends dropped him once he was convicted.

Naren stood by him.

My father believes that there is no saint without a past, and there is no sinner without a future.

Naren believed that too. His hope was that Rajat would learn something from his prosecution in the court of public opinion, and improve himself.

He believed in Rajat Gupta’s immense talent and capacity for good.

And he believed in friendship.

Of the many topics that evening, this was but one.

This segment is part 7 in the series : The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta
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