My father, Bal Raj Sehgal, passed away on February 26th, 2018 at the age of 84. I am who I am today because of my father. He gave me life; he gave me guidance; he gave me unconditional love; he gave me everything that I have today. He is survived by my mother, Aldona Sehgal, my two sisters, Vija, Sarita, and their children and husbands; his brother in India and numerous other relatives.
Bal Raj Sehgal was a superlative academic. He had published over 360 papers, and participated in conferences worldwide. He was a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, plus the respective academies of Sweden, India and Lithuania. A rare accomplishment. He had received numerous awards, and traveled all over the world to conferences and for his research. He was a professor at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, and also had done work at MIT, UC Berkeley and Purdue University. He was one of the early members of the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto. He influenced countless students and his colleagues only give him the highest praise.
A short obituary can be found here.
My parents had come to visit me for a week in San Francisco. My dad got the flu. His lungs were already somewhat compromised from pulmonary fibrosis, and he suddenly got a temperature of 104° F. We took him to the UCSF hospital; the same institution where I had done my PhD. After several hours late at night struggling with low oxygen levels, the decision was made for intubation. He never recognized that he was in a precarious situation and simply said “good night”, expecting to be awake after a day or two. He never woke up. My sisters flew in from Hawaii and Cape Town, and my cousin from Minnesota. Some of his students also flew to San Francisco. After 8 days on life support, he died peacefully surrounded by his family while taking his last breaths at 12:13 am on February 26th.
My father loved San Francisco, so in some ways it was fitting that he died in the place where he first arrived to the USA in 1956 for his studies at Berkeley. We were extremely grateful for the tremendous care at the UCSF hospital, and the Swedish insurance that paid for it. It was all dignified and we know that he will be remembered for his contributions, as a compassionate friend, and a remarkable father.
I just returned from India. I brought his ashes to the Ganges River as is traditional in his family. Below is a description of the time I spent there.
India is changing so fast; it is nearly unbelievable. I have been traveling to Delhi since I was a small child, and now it is simply unrecognizable. The traffic is chaotic, and the number of new high-rises and shopping areas is astounding. There are highways and immense housing complexes. There are malls and a sense of new affluence with brand names and restaurants. It is hard not to be nostalgic for the days when auto rickshaws dodged the cows in the streets, and night watchmen walked around the city blocks with whistles to thwart crime. Now it is flashing lights and the inevitable homogeneity of the world’s megacities.
The Hindu practices surrounding death are elaborate and each one has history and significant meaning. I am not versed in all the nuances, but the overall experience was profound. It is hard to describe the emotions one feels, and the sounds, colors, fragrances and sensory overload that is associated with the process. I am including some photos, but this is all a perfunctory snapshot. It is just not possible to adequately describe the feelings I had, bringing my father’s remains to his homeland for this final trek.
As is traditional, a pundit came to my uncle’s home and did a havan. This was a ceremony with fire and offerings. It was hard not to get emotional, but it was the beginning of a release for my father, and for we, the family.
The same afternoon, we held a very moving prayer ceremony at Arya Sumaj Temple in Defense Colony. Dozens of friends and relatives attended. After a beautiful music performance, the pundit placed a symbolic turban on me, and designated me as head of the family; the responsibility of the son.
Given the travels of my family from all corners of the world, we were not able to perform the ceremonies in the traditional timeline. But this didn’t seem to be of importance. The next day we drove to Haridwar, and the Ganges River. Our pundit met us for the ceremonies to cast my father’s ashes into the river. It is not a quiet peaceful place. Hundreds of people are doing the exact same thing, plus there are merchants trying to sell things, while others are bathing in the holy waters. It is not beautiful in terms of nature. But it is beautiful in terms of humanity. The pundit placed some of my father’s ashes in my hands, and then poured some water from the Ganges into the ashes. There were flowers and grains, milk and rice, each step with symbolic significance. There are truly no words to describe this. In the end, I, with my family behind me, poured the ashes onto the ghat steps, and they were washed downstream. Men were bathing just a few feet away. It was a release, just punctuating the impermanence of humanity, and the simplicity of life.
We found that we did not need to travel to Kurukshetra for the remaining ceremonies. We met with another pundit that had created elaborate mandalas under a bridge. This was another colorful series of offerings, followed by us walking around a makeshift bed 3 times. This was done since my father died in a bed, and not on the ground. We then fed the cows with long stalks of grass. After this, we bathed in the fast-flowing chilly holy river.
Finally, we entered my father’s passing into the Sehgal family book, that records the deaths and births. The book is housed in ragged cloth, is ~200 years old, and is part of a series of books that goes back some 580 years. The entire family tree is in these paper books. For me, it was a direct sense of connection to my ancestors, and my Indian genes.
A week in India is too short and I must go back again soon. My father was a man of the world, with passports from Sweden and the USA, but his home was India. If you would like to see interviews of my father and his early life, please look at the 1947 Partition Archive, or contact me any time. We miss him deeply.