Comments on: Aditya Behl 1966-2009

By: Ghufran Ahmed

Ghufran Ahmed — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:18:59 +0000

Aditya and I started our undergraduate at the same year at Bowdoin. Aditya’s passion for linguistics and his ability to learn about other cultures was truly amazing. Within a year Aditya was writing beautiful Urdu and understood urdu poetry at an advanced level. He was only 17. He truly will be missed.

By: Sunil Aggarwal

Sunil Aggarwal — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:55:25 +0000

I am saddened to hear of the death of Professor Behl. He was my Professor at UC Berkeley in Spring of 1998 in the Religious Identities of South Asia course. It was such a rich and engaging course–I had never met anyone like Professor Behl. I was so delighted when he gave me an A- on my first paper on the relationship between Krsna Bhakti and Sufism. We had classes on the lawn outside occasionally–he was ever the romantic. But oh so precise…He taught be so much about the richness of religious history in India. I had a chance to see him one more time nearly 9 years later when he came to give a seminar at the UW. I will treasure these memories for as long as I have them. I am still trying to find out the cause of his death.

By: Steven Stoltenberg

Steven Stoltenberg — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:26:28 +0000

How wonderful to read these testaments to Aditya’s brilliance as a scholar and heartfelt generosity as a friend! I met Adit at UC Berkeley at the beginning of his tenure there as a visiting scholar. We immediately fell into friendship. There were innumerable dinners – feasts really – with Adit on the phone while cooking, getting his mother’s secret recipe for dal makhani or brickle. There were innumerable trips together to Shreemati’s on University Avenue, where we pored over the thousands of CDs and cassettes and then rushed home to listen to everything from classical vina rags to rajasthani folk tunes. Adit would wax passionate about his love of medieval sufi romances as he reclined on my couch, puffing on a hookah and looking positively like some raj sultan in his luxurious silk kurta. What delight he took in all things beautiful! Recently back from a trip to India or Europe, he would proudly display his latest acquisitions. I think I most loved those lovely silver objects hanging on his wall which he described as “moon fruit,” giggling in delight at the poetic fantasy. In the last few years we drifted apart, and it saddens me to know that I only now learn of his passing and was unable to attend the memorial service and comfort his family and tell them how much Adit’s friends adored and treasured him. Adit inspired, and will continue to inspire us to emulate his cosmopolitanism, his erudition, his connoiseurship. I cannot believe how hard it is to imagine he is gone.

By: kabir

kabir — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:46:12 +0000

I met Aditya only once briefly at URDUFEST at University of Virginia last year. He was an amazing scholar, and lived a really inspirational life. It’s a reminder that one must live one’s life to the fullest as you never know when it is going to end.

Kabir Mohan

By: Nikolai

Nikolai — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:31:45 +0000

I only known him through his work as well, but my condolances to all who did know him. As I live in the area, I’ll be sure to make it to the memorial service.

By: Jawad

Jawad — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:46:28 +0000

Thank you for telling us about him.
In 1980 AB would have been 14 years old.

By: Katherine Butler Brown

Katherine Butler Brown — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:21:33 +0000

Thank you for this lovely tribute to a wonderful colleague and much loved, dear friend. I have been lost for words since I heard the news in Delhi, where I first got to know him on a more than merely collegial basis. Even though I knew him for far less time than many of his other friends and colleagues, I have learnt more from Adit than I will ever realise, I think, and I miss him tremendously, both his enormous scholarship and his delightful friendship. He was so full of life; what a loss to those of us left behind, and the next world’s true gain. I cannot but help think he is still with us in spirit, spurring us all on to new and better things, to take up where he left off, all too soon. Adit, ‘ashiq and rasika, and such a wonderful dost, you have left a terrible hole in the universe, and we will always miss you.

“Worlds, Lost, Tiny — When great worlds fall, we marvel and reach for our pens; when tiny worlds fall we are silenced. We live our lives under the shadows of lost love, when reconciliations fail or lie unsought, and each one is a small society, sometimes just of two, with its own language and history, its stories and memories that cannot survive on their own, in the dark. And worst of all, the jokes. Where do they go, when everything else has gone?” — Michael Bywater, Lost Worlds.

By: William Wolf

William Wolf — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:59:48 +0000

Thank you so much for this trip to Adit. I met him when we both started at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1988 and even then everyone who met him knew that he was going to be a major scholar. His knowledge, energy, and intelligence shone clearly even in those first months.

I also think there’s a small typo in this blog entry. “I met Aditya for the first time at the University of Chicago in the winter of 1980-81.” I think this should be “1990-91″, which would have been Adit’s 3rd year at the U of Chicago.

By: links for 2009-09-05 « Rumblegumption

links for 2009-09-05 « Rumblegumption — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:55:34 +0000

[...] Aditya Behl 1966-2009 [...]

By: Aditya Behl (1966-2009) « TheSouthAsianIdea Weblog

Aditya Behl (1966-2009) « TheSouthAsianIdea Weblog — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 16:22:09 +0000

[...] This tribute is reproduced with thanks from Chapati Mystery. [...]

By: Qalandar

Qalandar — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:35:08 +0000

I only knew Behl’s work from the Madhumalati translation, which was superb. No-one can read Mayaram’s tribute and fail to be moved. It is clearly a huge loss, my condolences…

By: bruce b lawrence

bruce b lawrence — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:32:46 +0000

Thanks, Shail, for including me in this wondrous tribute to Aditya,
who must be reborn a bodhisattva, or else ascend to the ranks of
aqtab in Sufi cosmology. He was a dazzling light that graced our
galaxy, only to burn out before many had come to know, and to
benefit, from his glowing intellect.

He will be missed more than most. He embodied what he
studied and taught: lyrical magic, abetted by dazzling creativity,
suffused with warmth and given with generosity.