Manju Bahl Obituary
In loving memory, family and friends mark the first anniversary of the passing of Manju Bahl (nee Gauba) on November 19.
Manju was born in 1955 to Jagdish and Sarla Gauba in Varanasi, India. She was the third of their three daughters, born in the wake of Partition and the promise of Indian independence.
Tragically, Jagdish died when Manju was just three years old. Sarla was left to raise her daughters on her own in a patriarchal society. With tenacity and fortitude, Sarla returned to university, earned two degrees, and embarked on an esteemed career in social work and higher education.
Inspired by her mother's example, Manju became fiercely independent, adventurous, and clear-eyed about the preciousness of life. She, too, was unbound by the conventions of the day. She was one of three women in her course to earn a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Physics, and Math and a Master's degree in Chemistry at Banaras Hindu University.
In 1979, Manju was introduced to Sudarshan Kumar, the son of Basdev and Dayawanti Bahl. They agreed to be married two weeks after meeting, and they started their married life first in Toronto and then in Chicago. Manju then began building her career and her family. She worked in the laboratories at Cook County Hospital, and she gave birth to her sons, Ankur and Veyom.
Searching for warmer weather and chasing the tech boom, Manju and Sudarshan moved to the Bay Area in 1986. Manju immediately took to California; her easy laugh, generous manner, and open heart won her lifelong friends in each home she built, in Sunnyvale, San Jose, and Santa Clara.
For the next 15 years, Manju poured her unending love and boundless energy into raising her boys. She relished getting them into great schools, coaching them in math and science, and volunteering on their field trips and grad nights. She shuttled them from practice to camp, performance to competition, humming her favorite 80s and 90s classics en route. She adopted her sons' friends as her own, feeding and nurturing them as an extension of her family. In the late 1990s, Manju also re-engaged with her career, working as a systems administrator and a software tester.
Over her 68 years, Manju invested deeply in the community of people she loved, guided by her refrain that we have just "one life to live," so we ought to "go the whole nine yards." She tended to her beautiful garden, remained a committed customer of local farmers' markets, and never said "no" to a chat over coffee or chai. She traveled to six continents, always arriving with gifts of homegrown avocados and homemade saag.
Manju's last waking day was one of simple pleasures: a drive, calls to family and friends, and a walk in the California sunshine with her husband of 44 years. She died a month-to the hour-after Sudarshan, in the arms of her sons, sisters, and son-in-law, Wayne. She is survived by family and friends all over the world who love her, miss her, and are reminded by her enduring wisdom to "have fun."
