Anish Dhingra

by phil on Monday Apr 3, 2006 8:22 PM

Friday March 31st, at 2am, my cousin Anish passed away. He was driving home from a restaurant in San Diego and crashed sideways into a tree. One passenger died, another one lived.

Anish was age 23, roughly the same age as I am. We grew up together and lived somewhat parallel lives.

In the mid-90s, him and I explored the Internet for the first time. I remember racking up expensive long-distance phone charges with him while we were playing multiplayer games online for the first time. We also built web pages together and chatted endlessly on IRC. We started a gaming magazine called eXscape, with him writing the articles, and me doing the development.

In High School, I somewhat lost contact with him, but then we became closer when I went to college. During our college years, he managed to make himself a millionaire almost overnight with an Internet marketing firm, but then subsequently lost most of that money when the FTC clamped down on his company's tactics.

As we both developed our own unique stories, we stopped competing with each other. Afterwards, our interactions were more like check-ups and comparing notes. We were both solving the same problems in our lives. We both hated school but loved learning. We were into absolutely geeky stuff, but always wanted to turn that into some sort of social product. We both also were somewhat of nihilists and atheists.

I don't know any other way to come to terms with this but to be grim and curt.

Comments

Tania said on July 6, 2006 7:02 PM:

I knew Anish in highschool...I heard a while back about his death. It's really sad news...my condelences go out to you and the rest of his family. He was a bright young man.

chanchal ghai said on August 29, 2008 1:43 AM:

hi philip how are you i was just browzing i just happen to see your web side i say let me send you the message i have a very good memory of anish he allways smile no matter what happen sice childhood sima used to baby sit him i allways remeber his happy face and smile on his face when i see him i miss him a lot love him aunty chanchal