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In memory of Pankaj Sadhu
For another memorial site look at www.pankajsadhu.info.
I vaguely remember it was about 7AM and I was tired. Actually I had already gone to bed half an hour earlier, exhausted after a long night of partying. The about 25 people crammed together in my small SoHo apartment had really done well. We had started early with dinner, opened some wine, invited some of the beautiful neighbors and started talking, dancing and flirting. People from all over the world. First of all we had visitors, León and Maija, a Dutch/Finnish couple living in Scotland, who were staying in New York for a few days and of course we had to make sure they would have a good time. So we invited a few friends. My girlfriend Chisako from Japan and her friend
Yukie and many more. And than there was Pankaj. I can not even remember where I met him, it felt like I had always known him. Probably I met him in a pool hall as we both were always shooting pool with friends, I guess.
At 2AM the first people had left the party, but it still continued. Around 4AM most had stopped dancing, exhausted, drunk and done for the evening. At least half the people had left by then, and it looked like it was all over. But somebody found
some salsa music, put it on, and immediately everybody was going for it again. This party just did not want to die. You should have seen him dance, charming the pretty girls. But now it had gotten light, people were tired and hungry, and it was finally over. But not for Pankaj, so he took some people to a closeby restaurant and ordered breakfast, ready for a new day. And what better to start a new early Sunday morning with a round of golf.
I remember Pankaj, full with energy, always ready to enjoy life.

Subhir was the first one who told me the terrible news. I was working out in the gym when my cellphone rang. 'The worst kind of news' he said, after which he told me about the traffic accident in India two days before. My friend Subhir is
married to Rimda, who through great coincidence is Pankaj' cousin. I went to their wedding in India and later when I got back in New York Pankaj looked at my website, to his surprise he saw his own mother in one of the pictures. I knew only few Indians, and they turned out to be family. From that day on I started to believe that Indian families are so large that all Indians one way or another are related.
Immediately I thought of Marian, who in a few weeks would go to Dubai to visit Pankaj. Marian and Pankaj had met at Baruch where they both studied, and had kept contact ever since, partly due to the magic of the red sofa, Afro Celt Sound System and a few strategically placed candles. She surely had not heard the news yet, and so I went to her apartment to tell her in person. She was not home, and I waited a few hours, but it was getting close to midnight so I guessed she wouldn't come home that evening. It turned out she was in France and by the time she was back in New York I was in Romania myself. She finally called me back when I was boarding the plane in Bucharest and it was the hardest phone call in my life, by far.

Also I received an email from one of Pankaj' friends in India who had found Pankaj' name on my website. And then there was also Marlis. Pankaj and Marlis had met in my house in New York when Marlis was visiting me and ever since Pankaj had tried everything to get her attention. And everybody who ever met Marlis will understand, as she is a
stunning and wonderful blond from Cologne, Germany with the sweetest heart and a soft spot for the wrong type of guy. But she is learning and the man that will get her will be one of the luckiest men alive. Pankaj was hoping it would be him of course and had managed to invite her to come visit him in Dubai just a few weeks before the accident. She had just returned when she heard the news from one of Pankaj' friends there and so she gave me a call.

A few weeks later Chisako and I organized an evening in memory of Pankaj with Marian and Pankaj' old roommate, golfpartner and best allround friend Anand. We all had a few laughs and tears that evening as we told eachother stories of our lives with Pankaj. He had enriched our lives, like he had done with so many others and he has been an example to us. A wonderful and sometimes mischieveous friend that will never be forgotten.