Gordon Lobo, 50 A free-spirited man who relished every challenge
The second wave of Covid-19 ravaged India, killing thousands and leaving families in grief. These people are not mere data points; they had real lives with hopes, dreams and loved ones. HT profiles some such people, famous and regular
Around 3:30am on May 15, just a week shy of his 51st birthday, Gordon Lobo’s vitals took a turn for the worse.
Doctors at the Goa Medical College and Hospital struggled to revive his dropping oxygen levels even as his family looked on hopefully. At the time, Goa was posting roughly 2,000 cases daily and every second person tested for Covid in the coastal state returned a positive result.
At 5am, Lobo died, roughly three weeks after he was admitted to the hospital for Covid. He is survived by his wife, Flavia, and 16-year-old son Logan.
Lobo was one of 75-odd people who died across five days at the premier hospital due to a drop in oxygen pressure between 2am and 6am every day – a period referred to by the high court as the “dark hours”.
The devastating second wave of Covid is ebbing in the state now. But for his family and large circle of friends, his passing created a void that has been hard to fill.
“Another body bag wheeled out of a Covid ward, another addition to the daily death statistics. But for those that knew him and loved him, his passing is a kick in the gut, an irreparable loss, a giant Gordonshaped hole that will never be filled,” said his close friend Rajiv D’Silva.
“It is a cliché when someone has passed to say they were ‘full of life’, but in Gordon’s case, I can’t help but use it. If there ever was a human filled to the brim with joie de vivre, that was our Gordon,” he added.
An architect by profession, Lobo was a popular figure in his native village of Aldona in north Goa. ‘Gordy,’ or simply ‘Gord’ loved village festivals and celebrations, especially during São João, a festival celebrated in June around community wells, tanks and ponds.
To his friends, Lobo’s demise took away more than a lively personality.
“Gordon Lobo was the wildest man I ever met. His unkempt curly grey-streaked hair, his baggy shirt and trousers with a thousand pockets, his droopy eye and equally droopy moustache, astride a junk of a bike, gave him a distinct look,” José Lourenço, a family friend said in tribute.
“Wildness ran in Gordy’s blood. If he came to your party you could expect some unpredictable events to occur, for sure… ‘Oi Jupiter!’ he would call out to busy waiters. If that did not evoke a response, he would yell: ‘Mexico!’ Invariably one of these names would work, and a waiter would come scurrying over, to placate the madman at our table. And he would insist on every soiled plate being instantly cleared from the table. If Gordy was at your table, you just felt taken care of,” he recalled.
Lobo was also a huge comic book fan who would travel great distances to collect rare editions.
“He had an extensive library at his wife Flavia’s ancestral house in Aldona. I once borrowed a book of
Kafka’s stories, an edition of The Father Brown Collected Stories, and a third book of crazy trivia from him. He was deeply devoted to his comic book collection. Which explains his son Logan’s name,” Lourenço added.
Logan refers to a character in the Marvel universe.
As a professional architect, Lobo specialised in helping restore and maintain old Goan houses.
“Working on his construction sites gave him great pleasure. Ordinary houses didn’t thrill him. He would brighten up telling of compound walls built in a day or structures repaired overnight, or tackling tricky litigation-hassled works. The man relished a challenge. Else he would relish wallowing on a site, taking ages to finish it,” Lourenço added. He collected knives, swords, and took a keen interest in crafting stuff out of what would appear to be waste wood. “His evenings would be spent at the Aldona Institute with villagers. He was a man with a tremendous wild spirit,” said Lourenco.