Arijit Guha at “The Wave” rock formation in Northern Arizona. Guha, an ASU graduate student who led a movement to raise caps on student health policies, died on March 22. (Photo courtesy of Heather Ehlers)Cancer activist and sustainability graduate student Arijit Guha died at home on March 22 with his wife, Heather Ehlers, by his side. His friends and family will honor his life on the ASU campus later this month.
“He didn’t like funerals because he found them depressing,” Ehlers said. “The whole point is for us to get together and kind of reminisce. It’s a chance to have a good time celebrating his life.”
Guha was diagnosed with colon cancer following a trip to India in 2011. In less than a year, he had reached the $300,000 lifetime cap of his student health policy and had to turn to social media to try to gather the $118,000 he needed to pay for his medical bills.
He created the website Poop Strong, where people could donate money and buy T-shirts. Through the website, Guha raised more than $130,000 that he would end up donating to different cancer causes.
After a heated Twitter exchange, Aetna agreed to pay for his medical expenses. A year later, the student health insurance no longer had lifetime caps.
“We’re still long ways away from what I call a sane, just, equitable health care system,” Guha told The State Press last year. “Patients are hurt when we prioritize profits over patients.”
Guha decided to end chemotherapy treatment at the end of last year and he transferred to hospice care in February. His brother, Sourav, and his parents, Manoj and Sipra, temporarily moved to Phoenix to spend more time with him.
Ehlers and Guha met eight years ago in Washington, D.C., while they worked at a science journal. They got married three years later.
“Our cubicles were probably like 20 feet from each other,” she said. “One day … he says I asked him out, and I say he invited himself along to something, but we went to the movies, started dating and that was it.”
Guha was outgoing, enthusiastic and positive and always made people feel welcome, Ehlers said.
“He thought that the most important attribute that anyone could have is passion,” she said.
Ehlers started a Facebook page after Guha’s death where she could disseminate information about him and people could share memories and thoughts of him. It very quickly garnered more than 1,000 likes, many of which came from people who had never met Guha personally.
Ehlers said Guha, who was deeply concerned with the world and mankind, would say his greatest achievement was to start a conversation about access to health care and its gross inequalities.
“Through his efforts advocating and talking to people at the administration at ASU, he managed to negotiate with Aetna for a new plan,” she said. “It actually costs about the same as the old plan did.”
Guha’s greatest quality was his immense compassion, Ehlers said. He was a vegetarian for more than 10 years, and by the time they got married, he had convinced Ehlers to join him.
“He had this great capacity to just care about everything,” she said.
Guha grew up in a suburb near Columbus with his older brother Sourav and their parents.
Sourav said his brother was always very comfortable with himself and was never embarrassed to speak out, which helped him cement his personality while pursuing his undergraduate degree in Carleton College in Minnesota.
“There, he tried to do anything and everything he wanted,” he said. “He ran three radio shows in the student station. He loved music.”
(Photo courtesy of Heather Ehlers)Sourav and Guha shared many of the same musical interests and often attended concerts together.
“Arijit became this campus character,” he said. “Whether it was streaking on campus or writing letters to the editor in the college newspaper.”
Sustainability graduate student Braden Kay met Guha while they were both students at Carleton, but did not become close until they met again at ASU.
“The amazing thing about Arijit is that he was a person that could be incredibly fun-loving and incredibly silly while also being very serious and very passionate about the things that he believed in,” he said. “While at Carleton, that manifested itself in him running the Cave.”
The Cave is a student-run pub founded in 1927 that is located in one of the dorms at Carleton.
During his time as a student in Carleton, Guha also became an advocate for the creation of an environmental studies program, Kay said.
“It was because of his advocacy that they moved environmental studies from a … concentration to a major,” he said. “He really was this inspiring person at Carleton.”
Guha also started a gender-neutral cheering team for the football team and was known for streaking more than once.
“When he passed, I thought, ‘Do I have to streak now?’” Kay said. “I’m sure some people will streak at (the celebration of his life). That would be the perfect way to honor him.”
Sourav, who wore an orange T-shirt with the words “Arijit Loves You” with a caricature of Guha’s face in lieu of the “o,” said his brother had always wanted to change the world and, by the time of his passing, he was sure he had accomplished something.
“He never made it solely about himself,” Sourav said. “It was about the social issue and the implication that not everybody has access to health care.”
Sourav spent his birthday, March 18, next to an energetic Guha.
“He was comforting us the last days and months,” he said. “He knew what was coming, and that’s why he made the decision to change to hospice.”
Guha, who loved food, cooking and farmers’ markets, cooked Thanksgiving dinner last year for the family even though he had not eaten for almost a month.
“All the people that supported him and cared about him. … That’s a reflection of how he treated others throughout his life and of how generous he was,” he said.
Kay said Guha turned his battle with colon cancer into an opportunity to become an advocate for proper health care.
“Arijit combined humor and advocacy in an amazing way,” he said. “He did that with Poop Strong.”
Guha had an amazing support system through his family, friends, but most of all through Ehlers, Kay said.
“Heather has just been amazingly strong through this whole process,” he said. “She’s been an inspiring person both through Arijit’s sickness and now.”
Billie Turner, Guha’s graduate adviser, first met him at Clark University in Massachusetts, where Guha was completing his Master’s degree. Turner recruited him to ASU.
Turner said Guha was one of the hardest-working students he had ever encountered, and they quickly developed a professional relationship.
Last year, Turner and other students put together a team dubbed "Guha's Gang" to participate in Relay for Life, a community fundraising walk.
“(Guha) was very considerate, maybe excessively,” he said. “He was very thoughtful (and) always looked for the good in everything.”
Sustainability professor Arnim Wiek also worked closely with Guha and said he plans to publish a paper on the research that they worked on together.
“As a student, Arijit was one of the smartest students I’ve ever had,” he said. “He was extremely quick in understanding, but he was also very pleasant.”
Wiek ran along Guha in last year’s Phoenix Undy 5000, a walk created by the Colon Cancer Alliance.
Guha’s sense of humor and his unique laughter were his greatest qualities, Wiek said.
“He would always find a twist to everything,” he said.
Allan Markus, director of Campus Health, became close to Guha during the course of his treatment and took over as his physician when he transitioned into hospice care.
“(Guha) was a wonderfully unique individual who possessed ultimate optimism in the good of people and the activism to make this world a better place,” he said in an email. “I was blessed to have been able to be his physician and the opportunity to meet his wife Heather and his family.”
Guha was always looking for ways to help others. When he was still living in Washington, D.C., he decided to grow his hair for almost two years to donate it to various organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam. His 22-month journey was documented in a blog titled “The Hair Project.”
“When I have kids, they’ll never know their uncle, but they can read about him,” Sourav said. “They’ll see how much he affected other people. His memory and presence lives on in so many other people.”
Reach the reporter at dpbaltaz@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @dpalomabp
