Gurmukh Singh Sandhu

MISSING A WONDERFUL DAD AND GRADPA WHO WAS LOVED SO DEARLY

Our revered and beloved father was born at village Valtoha in Punjab in 1928 and was the first child in his ancestral family to graduate from College. He studied at reputed Khalsa College Amritsar and started his career as Civilian School Teacher in the Army. Later he joined the Accountant General Office in Punjab rising to the position of Senior Accounting Manager. Afterwards he migrated to Food Corporation of India as Senior Vigilance Manager and subsequently retired as Financial Advisor in FCI. He always led very humble, sincere and truthful life for which we will always be proud of him. His success along with my uncles brought so much Happiness and Pride to our grandmother in the village, when people will quote Unity, Humbleness and Charisma of her three sons.

Besides his pleasant and charming looks he was superbly intelligent with liberal mind and was so adaptive to changes and adjustments in life. He would reflect back upon his actions and would never hesitate to apologize which we think is one of the best qualities that one can have. He was a great believer of True Love and taught us to follow ones heart and considered “Love” above all materialistic things in the world. He proved that more so to us after our mother was gone about 10 years ago, that how deeply and truly he loved her. His smiles, jokes and even health were never the same. Her picture was always hanging on the wall, no matter how much we tried to move it away.

He maintained a very balanced life full of love, laughter, hard work and dedication to his family as well as respect for everyone around him. All our maternal and paternal Uncle and Aunts will lean to him for advice and will follow his suggestions positively and sincerely and was greatly loved and highly appreciated amongst his family, friends and colleagues. He was a very good Volley ball player and represented erstwhile PEPSU state and then Punjab State. He also played at international level against Russian Volleyball Team. He felt proud when later his younger brother played the game at National levels and followed his legacy.

Our Grandfather was addressed as Saint in his village and whenever we looked at our father that was the first inherited trait that we used to notice. A real Saint: sweet, patient, flexible, caring, dedicated, understanding, humble and inspiring person. Besides he was uniquely humorous with handsome personality and above all superbly intelligent. He never recited long paths on regular basis and verbally remembered very few but sincerely practiced them in his life. We felt that he was very religious as when we listened to Gurubani, we felt that he tried to teach us the same values and discipline with respect to dealing with other human beings. We grew in a household where Vaheguruji, Shivji and other religions were all worshiped and respected.

While growing up in Shimla in early sixties we felt proud when he was very famous and popular as Handsome and Smart Secretary of Shimla Supports Association and held matches and events at Shimla Ridge in presence of then Maharajas and princesses’ of PEPSU (Patiala and neighbors). We enjoyed great outdoors with weekend picnics and excursions with him and his friends and their families. He instilled importance of hard work, truthfulness and sincerity in our lives.

We feel lucky to have had great joy of his company for many years where he was besides our father, our inspiration, our companion, and above all our support system. We miss him so much already and we will forever remember having the most incredible dad.

We don’t know how long it will take us to grieve this tremendous loss. He was the most important person in our lives and we feel heartbroken to no longer have him here with us. His memory will forever carry on.