Remembering My Father

A tribute to my father, Professor Sushil Prakash Gupta, who passed away on April 29th, 2021.

Five months ago, on April 28th, I was on a flight to India with a stopover in San Francisco when I got the news of my father passing away. He was critically ill with COVID19, and I could not reach him in time. It was a painful rest of the journey, followed by an even more painful five months in India trying to help and reestablish things for my mother. Yesterday, my mother and I made it back to the states, and today, on September 18th, we celebrate my father's 68th birthday. He was a retired university professor after a teaching and research career of 38 years, with dozens of doctoral students and authorship of more than 50 books and 100s of research papers. However, there was a lot more about him that is worth sharing. This is my effort to present some of the facets of his life that I found fascinating.

My father had humble beginnings. He hailed from a very modest family in the city of Hapur in western Uttar Pradesh. His father, my grandfather, was a clerk in a local high school in Hapur. He had eight children and very limited means to support. My father was fond of reading since early childhood. He would read story books, novels, newspapers, paper bags, and virtually anything that he could lay his hands on. This also lead to stressed eyes, eye glasses, and later a lens power of astonishing -20. My father loved the Indian Chai and he not only made them on his own but would also get anyone to make one for him: mother, sister, brother, and later his wife and kids. Naturally, I learned making chai by serving him as I grew up even though I never sipped one until I was in college. Given the family background, there was never a push (nor the means) for education. Yet my father assembled lots of college degrees, including two bachelor's degrees (Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Education), four master's degrees (Master of Science in Mathematics, Master of Education, Master of Philosophy, Master of Arts in Economics), and a Ph.D. He was the first doctorate in the family and it was an achievement since there are numerous stories of how he managed to stay in college, with numerous scholarships, despite the family pressure to start earning sooner. His father once took him for a teacher job in primary school. Luckily, he was not selected since he was destined to be a university professor.

My father was an entrepreneur at heart. While still in college, he bought an old printing machine to set up a printing press in the drawing room of their home in Hapur. He displaced his father to another room and promised to get a second room built for his sittings with the visitors. Of course, that never happened. My father also started selling petty things (like biscuits, tickets, cosmetics, etc.) in front of their house. This later evolved into selling stationery and books into a shop called Jindal Book Store, which got pretty famous in the entire city of Hapur. My father also self-published his own early books in the late seventies and eighties. He even published his own marriage card in his own printing press (how cool was that!). After he joined Allahabad University, he set up his own publication in Allahabad to publish his first curriculum book and was distributing them to local shops after his university lectures. One of the shopkeepers, Sharda Pustak Bhavan, eventually offered to take over the publishing part (their first such venture and they now publish hundreds of books with the majority ones being my fathers'). Still later, my father picked up valuable computer skills when he chaired undergraduate admissions in Allahabad University and when he was appointed the Director of the Institute of Correspondence Courses. He learned Windows and Microsoft Access and got pretty good at it. He used them to introduce computerized I-Cards and examinations in Allahabad University for the first time. That was a major digital transformation at that time. His curiosity and enthusiam with computers in his otherwise non-technical job exposed me to computer technologies and were instrumental in nurturing my interests. The thing I learned from him was that you don't necessarily need to run a business to be an entrepreneur, you can be one in how you go about in life.

My father was a celebrated scholar. Apart from publishing papers, he also started a journal, called the Association of Young Researchers in Education (AYRE), as a young lecturer in Allahabad University. He persevered in his early book writing efforts and eventually won several awards, including state awards presented by the Governor of Uttar Pradesh and the Prime Minister of India, and national award, the Education Award of India, presented by the Education Minister of India. He had a meticulous focus on quality and gave a hard time to his publisher on every single detail. Later, he started a second journal, called the Journal of the Association for the Promotion of Educational Activities and Research (APEAR), that is still running since the last twenty years. He inspired my mother to pursue her doctorate after marriage and with two kids. Furthermore, he involved her in the book writing work and together they co-authored several books. He was also my inspiration for going to the graduate school in Germany, even after having a comfortable corporate job in India. He was always eager to know about every paper I wrote and every paper that got accepted brought him genuine joy and pride. He was an acclaimed figure in the field of education and was regularly invited to numerous academic bodies, committees, and ceremonies. Much of this was due to his books that are known throughout the Hindi speaking nothern India (most of his books are in Hindi with a few in English). Even today more than 16 of his books are in active circulation as per the last royalty records. In fact, barely months before his death, he published an analysis of India's latest educational policy, and two other books were in development at the time of his death (the publishers have no clue what to do with the drafts now). And this was a retired person of 67 years of age, who had already achieved everything that one could hope for, and who was having signficant eye troubles in reading and writing. I can never stop admiring such dedication to one's professional field.

My father taught my sister and me to do the right thing, in every situation, not just because someone is watching but because that is how it should be done. He was my moral compass and my mentor in all aspects of life, be it life or career, family or kids, learnings or failure, he was the first person for me to seek out and discuss, argue, or just bounce of the ideas. He would listen patiently and then speak what he thought irrespective of whether we liked it or not. He was always a straight shooter and never shy of telling the truth. This coupled with his high morals and integratity often landed him in unfavorable situations with his bosses to the point that he sued his employers thrice in the Allahabad High Court and ended up winning each time. He was also a problem solver with genuine out of the box thinking. Owing to his hunger for problems and the knack for coming up with solutions, my daughter says that he is more intelligent than any of us (apparently he fixed their toys on several occassions). He was also very systematic (and yes super punctual!) in everything he did and always urged my sister and me to get better at planning and organizing things. Unfortunately, we depended on him for so many things (he would still send us reminders for various things over phone) and still had a lot to learn from his organizational skills. In fact, there are just so many things from my father's life that went unnoticed or were taken for granted while he was around. And this is why, even after 5 months, his loss is too much for us to bear. Yet, today we celebrate a life well lived and a soul well served. My father continues to inspire not just my family and me but also so many other people whom he touched in so many different ways. We are grateful to all of them for their support and kindness as we rediscover our paths in life, with a special note of gratitude to my colleagues and leaders in the Gray Systems Lab at Microsoft for their understanding and backup over a life changing summer.