Meeting Madan

How an Art Museum is Really About People

Yesterday Scott and I attended the funeral of our longtime friend and museum patron Madan Goyal. If you’ve been to an opening at the Crow Museum in the last twenty plus years you have seen him. Because he attended 99% of our events and openings. He was nicknamed “The Captain of Charisma”. But, it was a quiet charisma: the charisma of a Gentle Man.

Madan was 82: years he filled deeply with family, work, volunteerism, culture art and friends. Ten days ago he attended a networking event in Plano at a restaurant. Later, video footage shared with his son captured him smiling (he had a signature grin), meeting people and exchanging business cards. This tracks…a phrase that was repeated in my head over and over during the service yesterday. Madan collapsed from a sudden stroke and fell, hitting his head. He passed away three days later on Father’s Day.

Madan loved life, so I am glad he did not have to suffer through the end of his. His children arrived quickly and he had a few hours, even though he was unconscious, to experience a loving goodbye with his beloved family. Last week when I was in Boston I missed two calls from his precious wife Sneh and an email. I am touched that they wanted me to know. I was glad to know.

My friendship with Madan was held in the space of a few minutes every three or so months. If he was not lovingly supporting a Crow Museum of Asian Art event, I would see him at the World Affairs Council, the Business Council for the Arts, TACA and so many more. He was always there. Smiling (grinning), enjoying meeting new friends and learning something new. He was engaged.

Yesterday, thanks to the beautiful eulogies and writings on his life, I learned everything I did not know about my humble friend, Madan. He arrived to the United States at nineteen: open to the promise of the United States of America. He studied in Utah and was employed with Xerox in Rochester, N.Y. and was transferred to Dallas with his young family. His daughter Irma shared that he dropped his wife off at the hospital on the day of her birth. It was his first day of work with Xerox. He would meet his daughter later that evening.

While still at Xerox, I didn’t know he opened “India House”, one of the first South Asian restaurants in Dallas in the eighties on Mockingbird Lane. Food was culture. Culture was friendship: and friendships were precious. He would go on with other entrepreneurial pursuits: opening a liquor store and a passport service that is now forty years thriving.

He was married to dear Sneh for fifty-six years. The had three beautiful children -now leaders in his likeness who shared brilliant and generous stories of their dad. It all tracks.

He collected art. Madan was the first person to call me twenty years ago and offer a work on longterm loan to the Crow Museum: a majestic and large-scale Harihara. Our friendship was in brief moments. I could be regretful that I didn’t spend more time with Madan, but his love and encouragement in the bytes and bits was more than enough: this week’s mantra has been “release not regret”. This tracks, too.

I am so grateful that the family reached out to me. I am so grateful I could see him in them: not in the open casket filled with rose petals: the shell of my friend who was more present in the vivacious wind in the trees outside as I looked out, past his body. The room was full of people: from his communities: Xerox, Plano, Boards and South Asian community groups. It was standing room only. The family shared the 15th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. We sang prayers together. I hope he heard my rusty Sanskrit. And grinned.

What I felt in the moments of thinking “this tracks” is this: whether I was his friend, his daughter, his colleague, his nephew: the stories and human-ness of Madan was sincere to every one of us. He was real to each of us: the person who loved us authentically and wanted the very best for each of us.

He told me once he wrote a letter to the Crow Family about me: perhaps the 2015 version of a Linkedn endorsement. It was unexpected. Trammell never mentioned it, but I love that Madan did mention it. He wanted me to know he was my cheerleader. He wanted me to know he believed in me. He wanted me to know he saw me.

What grace. It was a quiet humility I witnessed yesterday: each of us profoundly moved by the all of us. Meeting Madan over the years, saying hello, how are you, talking with him for a few full moments at an exhibition opening: they were more than enough.