Arun Shah, 54, a software database entrepreneur, mentor to more than a generation of software hopefuls and Saratoga resident for the last 16 years, was pursuing his passion for hiking when he suffered a massive heart attack, collapsed on the trail and died on June 12.

It was a warm sunny day when Shah had set out for the trail. The heat might have reminded him of his native India. Shah was training for a trek at the end of June to Mansarovar in India—a lake near Mt. Kailash on the India-Nepal border, revered as a holy place by Hindus and Buddhists.

Reshma Nigam was hiking with Shah when he went down. She called 911 and Shah's family, and then she rushed down to the beginning of the trail to get more help.

But Shah had collapsed in an inaccessible part of the trail and it took precious time for the helicopter to land and for the paramedics to reach the spot. "They were unable to revive him," said Asish Vaidya, Shah's brother-in-law.

Shah was born in 1950 in Rajkot, a mid-sized city in Western India, three years after the country gained its independence from the British.

Rajkot is the city where Mahatma Gandhi, freedom fighter and peace advocate, grew up and spent his early years.

"It was an exciting time to be born. The communities were abuzz with talk about rebuilding India after the British had left. There was a lot of hope in the air," said Meera Shah, a sister of Shah's who lives in London.

Arun Shah was born into a storied family. His grandfather had been a director of education in the state of Saurashtra, now merged with the Western Indian state of Gujarat. His father, a state minister, would soon become the commerce minister in the national cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister.

A young Shah created such a ruckus when his older sister and brother started going to school that he was put into school two years early. "He was ahead of his class. I think his grandfather, being a former director of education, was very pleased," said Meera.

Being ahead was going to be his motif for the rest of his school years. He finished at the top of his class at the school in Rajkot. When his family moved to New Delhi, the country's capital, he enrolled at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, a local school, where he topped his class yet again.

In 1966, Shah majored in electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, one of India's premier engineering and technology institutes. Predictably, he won a gold medal for academic achievement.

Like many other students at IIT, he wanted to pursue higher studies in the United States. In September of 1971, Shah enrolled at Stanford University to work toward a doctorate in bio-electronics.

An avid cricket fan in India, he became a 49er fan when he moved to the Bay Area. "He had a photographic memory," said his sister Meera. "He was the best source whenever anyone in the family needed some sports statistics."

After finishing school at Stanford, Shah started working at Amdahl Corporation, a company that manufactures supercomputers, and he met Shobhana Vaidya. They were married in 1976.

Shah worked at Amdahl for 20 years and rose to be one of its vice presidents.

In 1997, with the dot-com boom at its peak, he started Merlinsoft, a database software company, with a former colleague.

Two years later he sold his company to Brio, another data-warehousing company, and became its vice president. Since 2001, Shah had been working with two software companies—V-soft and Ispring.

Shah was a regular at local bridge tournaments and even won a few of them. "He even made an electronic version of bridge and chess but never marketed them," said Meera.

Ruchira Shah, one of his daughters, said, "He had a logical approach to everything. He was constantly giving me Lego sets for my birthdays while others were giving me Barbie dolls."

She remembers the last time she traveled to India with her dad.

"It was December of 2002. We carried a suitcase full of books with us," said Ruchira. "My dad could read two books a day."

Arun Shah is survived by his wife, Shobhana, who runs a travel agency, and two daughters, Ruchira and Alina, both graduates of Saratoga High School.

Ruchira, a theater major from Northwestern University, works for a talent-spotting agency in Los Angeles. Alina is a sophomore at New York University.