My name is Subhash & I have had the privilege of knowing Hashmat ji since
1980,

Puri family was the first Indian family we got to know, as friends, in
the area, though many years later Hashmat Ji did discover that we were actually
distantly related to him & it was true

Since this discovery, Hashmat ji always used to proudly say, he has lots
& lots of friends & acquaintances here, however we are the only real
family he has in North of England & we could count on his help &
support at any time. Sometimes jokingly, at various friends gatherings he would
reverse the sentence and he would say that we are the only family he has &
he could count on our support at any time. He loved all of us with such joy and
pride, that it lit up his face every time we were together.

He was a generous man, who was kind & caring. He was compassionate,
content and full of wisdom. I am sure everyone will recognise there was never a
time, that we could not seek his help or that he would not offer his advice
& wisdom, whether asked for or not. I must add, his thoughts & advise
generally turned out to be correct.

Hashmat Ji was very hard working, skilled & talented professional.
Most of us perhaps knew him as a successful business man, owning & running
a Nursing Home in Redcar, with his partners. His real talent though
lay elsewhere. He was an experienced civil & structural engineer. He
designed various properties in the North East including the family home the
Puri family live in today. He also worked on the design and testing
of various oil & gas platforms in the Norwegian part of the
North Sea. You may or may not know this, however he commuted every week
to Norway from Teesside for many many months.

Before coming to the UK, he and his family partners in India worked on
the extension of the famous North and South Block buildings adjacent to the
President House Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi. He started his career in England
working with Dorman Laing at Redcar, later to become part of British
Steel. For a period, he negotiated either for or with the trade Unions there,
where he picked up his skill of forth right plain speaking, for which we all
remember and love him.

He was a bit of a show man also. He really loved the idea of having a
BMW or Mercedes car parked on his drive, irrespective of whether he drove or
used the car or not. The thought of owning a luxury executive car gave him
pride & joy.

Earlier in the year, while he was poorly, he one day said to me that
like many Indian men, after most days hard work early in his career, he used to
think ‘ Have I made my family and my parents proud? Did I make their world at little bit better, financially or otherwise?’ This is the way he lived his life. As he
rests from his life’s long hard work, this good husband, father, and friend
should really know that he has made his family very proud indeed

Albert Einstein the great physicist once
said, ‘Our death is not an end, we live on in our children and the younger
generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of
life’
Hashmat Ji’s memory will live on, with the next
generation, with all of us. His humility, integrity, and hard work will
continue to inspire those of us who knew him. May his soul Rest in Peace.