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Venu Gopal Menon
May 31st, 1944 - March 31st, 2021
May 31st, 1944 - March 31st, 2021
VENU GOPAL MENON was born in Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), Kerala, India, on 31 May 1944, and died on 31 March 2021 in Bangkok, Thailand. We hope that the stories and images shared below by his family, friends, and colleagues will give anyone visiting this page a better sense of this wonderful, interesting man whom we all loved so much.
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Tributes
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Sudheer M.
I have met Mr Venu Menon only once while at a Ayurveda retreat. I vaguely remember his face and I believe he is the same gentleman as Mr. Venu here. We were in touch via email (vmenon125@yahoo.com) and spoke once on the phone. He gave me great advise. I was moving to SEA and had many questions about Thailand. My last few emails went unanswered. A brief search on the web brought me here. I read all the postings here and I realized it is the same Venu - world traveler, wise, friendly, helpful. He was a good advisor to me though for a brief period. May his soul rest in peace.
Jennifer A. Mazzola
I am so sorry to hear of Venu’s passing. We became friends and dated off an on for several years in the late 80s/early 90s when I was trying to finish my Masters in Denver and he was in CoSprings. We met through the professor I TA’d for and he offered to teach me Italian. I figured out pretty soon that he only knew about as much Italian as I did, but by then I was smitten, and he did take me to Rome to make up for the fib. It was my first time out of the US, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. He was such a charming, intelligent man and knew so much about the world. We fell out of touch over the years, but then he found me in 2015 through my son’s Facebook. Andy was a toddler when I knew Venu, but he said he remembered him as “the big man who used to laugh and throw me up in the air and gave me lots of candy.” My son passed away in 2018 and I stopped keeping in touch with just about everybody. I just looked up Venu’s name thinking I’d drop him an email and I am so sad to see he is gone too. Sending love and condolences to his family and friends. —Jen
Jyoti Kapur
Venu Menon My dear dear friend of 30 plus years had this habit of suddenly disappearing and just as suddenly reappearing in your life. His sudden passing has left everyone and me personally in total shock. He went away too soon and too fast and will be sorely missed. From his family, I have met only Gita and Suresh. But have heard Venu speak very fondly about his other sisters- Indra and Nimmi as well as his nieces and nephews. It is difficult to deal with the fact that there will no longer be any exchange of messages or telephone calls with Venu. No more visits to Bombay and no more hilarious evenings spent drinking good whisky followed by delicious food!! Rest in peace dear Venu. Will miss you
G. Reyhoul
My name is Gene Reyhoul. I worked with Venu in Mexico. I am so shocked to find this page. We usually exchange holiday emails and I didn’t get one back this year so I wondered but I never thought something happened to him. I don’t understand this at all. Was he sick? We talked a lot in December of 2020 and he seemed fine. He was excited to come to the US in the Spring but I figured he couldn’t because of Covid. We talked a lot about his plans to move to Florida and I gave him my sister’s email because she is a realtor there. I don’t understand what happened. Could someone in his family please email me through this website and let me know? I have lots of photos of our time in Mexico that I would love to send to his family. We had so much fun there. Venu was a little bit older than the rest of us. We looked up to him. He had traveled the world. We would all cram in the car on weekends and drive all over. The Mexican guys called him El Mujeriendo because he seemed to have a girl in every port like the saying goes. He loved that nickname and he said he’d get a shirt with it. He had a story for every situation. He liked exploring meeting new people. He never made anyone feel less than. He gave great advice to all of us. We got close when he was diagnosed with bladder cancer years later. My brother had it and he called to ask about what treatment my brother had. We stayed in touch after that. I wish I could talk to him one more time because I would like to tell him how much he influenced my career. What a great man. I am sorry for his family. Best regards, Gene
Kamalad Sittisarn
If someone asks me to define about K. Venu, I will tell them that he was “A Real Ray of Sunshine”, did not only for his friends but he was a ray of sunshine for all people that he met or knew. I never saw him look down to anybody. I only saw him try to support to everybody as much as he can in each case. He always said that “See, how lucky we are” when we saw some people worked beside the road. He liked to give an opportunity to disadvantaged people for example, he paid attention about education of children because he would like the children graduated with degree that they can find a good job to get a lot of money and use it to take care themselves and their families. Then, he continuously gave a scholarship to some children who had excellent academic achievement but indigent for many years. Another sample, he had the rule for himself that if he got or bought new clothes, he would donate his clothes as same as number that he got to foundation which take care for homeless people or indigent. Did not only clothes that he donated, he would asked what’s the things that they need and he would donate the things to meet their requirement. For friends, he always fully supports them when they ask for help. Even though some of his friend took advantaged from his kindness but I never saw him cut off friendship with anybody. He always has good intention to his friends. He loved to see his friends and their families had good health, good life and happiness. For me, he was one of my best advisor, best teacher, best partner and best friend. He taught me a lot both of work and life. He always gave me great-kindness supports. I am eternally grateful for everything he did. It is so hard for me to accept that he already passed away even I know that death is natural part of life. I miss our discussion, talking and all activities that we did together but I know these will not resume again. I assume that now he is in his new journey. However, I believe that due to all good things that he did, it will make him has a great new journey which he will enjoy with it. I would like to tell him that ‘Please go ahead K. Venu, enjoy your new journey, I will join this journey and meet you again in one day. Till we meet again’ “As long as I live, you will live. As long as I live, you will be remembered. And as long as I live, you will be loved”
Jaya Mani
It is hard to think of a world without Venu. Now that he is absent, one realises what a larger than life presence he was. Retirement brought out the best in Venu and although I imagined a workaholic like Venu would be miserable as a retiree, in actual fact, the opposite was the case. But then, that was Venu - full of surprises. Retirement meant that he connected so much more with family and friends. He seemed to love his ‘retiree routine’ - including reading 100 pages of a book each day, golf, friends, travel, ayurveda, meeting people, making new friends. He had time for long telephone conversations - funny, argumentative, intelligent. He was a good listener and a good advisor - sometimes unhappy or annoyed if advice was ignored! He found the time to visit his relatives in Kerala. He adored his sisters and one knew an ultimate compliment was being paid if he said something like, “ Indira would agree with you ” or “You keep a home like Gita’s” or “You sound just like Billy”. For Venu, his nieces and nephews were utterly brilliant - he was their proud uncle. He would melt relating stories of the little ones in Chennai. Santosh was the co-ordinator of Venu’s Bangalore itinerary. He would call and say, “HRH is arriving” which meant one better make sure an evening or two was set aside for a dinner at the Golf Club or Venu’s much loved ‘Biriyani’. Difficult to come to terms with the fact that HRH will not be visiting any more! Venu will be sorely missed.
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