Page 102 - A Life Well-Lived Is a Beautiful Memory

He also kept me informed about renovations to their house which was badly damaged during
the big flood is Thailand. It seems that the house was still under renovation when he passed, and

they ended up living in their condominium permanently. Although located further away from
Thammasat than their house was, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it was closer
to the hospital where Bhanu had his chemo treatments.
We would always exchange “pasalubongs” or presents from home when we would attend

AEP meetings. For many years, I would gift him with hopia, mooncakes, wasabi-flavored potato
chips (He liked these!), mushroom chicharon (like crispy pork rind) etc. He said that he and
Divina particularly liked hopia and so in more recent years, I would always bring hopia for him
to take home. He would thereafter send me an email to tell me that Divina brought the hopia to

school and had it for lunch. I would always remind him not to eat all the hopia before he got back
to Bangkok because sometimes, he would get hungry on the flight home, which was usually late
at night, and the pasalubongs would not make it to Bangkok. In one of the non-AEP meetings
that Yuki Abe invited us to in Kyoto, for example, I recall that the late Mahani (from Malaysia)

and I went to Nishiki Market there. Mahani looked for and found this special bread she liked and
bought some for Bhanu and I to take home. Bhanu ate the bread on the flight back as he said he
got very hungry! Divina never saw that special bread from Nishiki Market!
In the last few years, Bhanu told me that he had an enlarged prostate but did not want the

doctor to examine him. He told me that he freaked out when he saw how long the probe was! I
told him that many men have an enlarged prostate as they age and that my own husband was on
medication for it. We did not see each other during the pandemic years. In October 2022, when
we saw each other for the first time at the Seoul AEP meeting since the pandemic began in 2020, I

was shocked to see how much weight he had lost and thought that there was something the matter
with his health. But when I asked him about it, he did not say what he was suffering from nor
that he was feeling any discomfort or pain. I only found out afterwards that the doctor confirmed
his cancer diagnosis a month after that Seoul meeting. He also did something very unusual on

the way to that last AEP dinner in Seoul—while we were walking with the rest of the group to
the restaurant for dinner, he stopped me and said, “Let’s have our picture taken together.” In all
the years I had known him, Bhanu, a quiet and shy person, always seemed a bit uncomfortable
about having our photo taken together at these dinners. But now, here he was asking to have our

photo taken together. I suppose he suspected that he was already seriously ill then, and that we
might not have the chance to have dinner together again. He wanted some kind of memento of
our happy AEP years.
In January 2023, I was in Bangkok for a meeting with another group of academics. I emailed

Bhanu to try and arrange a get-together. On the day I arrived at my hotel, I received a message from
him saying that he was confined at the hospital and that he was about to undergo some procedure
and so could not meet up. He never let on about the gravity of his illness or the pain that he was

102 A Life Well-Lived Is a Beautiful Memory