Got the shocking news of Raj ‘OldMonk’ Mathur passing away couple of nights back. Was speechless when I first heard it. The news first reached twitter and then I went to check whether it was actually true. Couldn’t believe my eyes. What’s worse is it actually took me a few seconds to believe it was him when I saw his body at his funeral.
Really sad! He’s my first ever FOSS superhero! R.I.P. RT @niyambhushan Rajmathur of linux-delhi fame just died an hour ago.
— Abhinav Sahai (@AbhinavSahai) December 12, 2012
The next few hours I just spent time looking for his mails, digging out my old blogs, where i’d talked about him and reading them. In the process, I came across some pics too which made me nostalgic. Even though I never really got close to him, I was always trying to learn from him from a distance. His to the point conversations. His brutally honest statements. His humour. His love for food and booze. The amount of passion that he had for his work. Rarely would you find such people.
Thanks to @gmishra for introducing me to him as what followed after my first meeting with him and the Open Source world has governed a lot of my mind and life, till date. Yes, despite not being a coder anymore, I still use a Linux machine and go about promoting the FOSS philosophy wherever I go and will always do. Incidentally, it was @gmishra himself who broke the sad news to me!
Thanks Raj sir, may your soul rest in peace.
Freed.in pic. Snap taken by his best buddy Kishore Bhargava
