July 02, 2008

Another LAPD Killing

First it was Micheal Cho, the Korean American recent college grad that was shot and killed in La Habra for holding a tire iron. Now, it’s 21 year old Pakistani-American Mohammad Usman Chaudhry.

On Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 4a.m. in Hollywood, CA, Mohammad Usman Chaudhry, a highly functioning autistic person, was shot multiple times and killed by the LAPD (Hollywood Division) on the 1400 block of Curson Ave. Usman was still in handcuffs when examined by the coroner. Family members of Usman were not told about his death until 21 days after the killing. [SouthAsianNetwork]

According to police, Officer Joseph Cruz and his partner were patrolling the street when they saw a dark figure by an apartment complex. The officers approached to investigate and encountered Chaudhry lying behind some bushes. As Cruz was questioning Chaudhry, he pulled out a folding knife and stabbed Cruz on the left hand. Cruz pulled out his gun and fired several rounds at Chaudhry.[LATimes]

Los Angeles non-profit South Asian Network gathered together community members last week to hold a candlelit vigil to support Usman’s family and demand an end to police violence. About 200 community members came out in support.

“The vigil for Usman Chaudhry was really powerful to attend on many different levels,” says Preeti Sharma, a local South Asian organizer. “Seeing the family speak out and share their anger at the police brutality, hearing the stories of other young men of color shot recently by LAPD, and lastly having people in the community feel empowered enough to give their testimony was altogether an emotional and empowering experience.”

There’s something just simply so wrong with how this story has played out. Not only was the kid only 21 years old, but he was autistic. I’m sure the autism contributed to awkwardness when he was approached by LAPD at 4am. And even if he stabbed the police with a folding knife, why shoot several rounds at a HANDCUFFED man? CopWatch also notes that the LAPD ran Usman’s ID before he was killed, as well. So basically, evidence shows that LAPD had him in custody when he was murdered.

Many other people think this is an injustice too, and a blog memorial has been started in Usman’s memory. And his family and friends on it have questions as well and is heartbreaking to read…

1. Why was his family notified 21 days after his death when the officers had Usman in custody (in handcuffs) and had the chance to run his id? 2. Was his death not important because LAPD believed him to be homeless? Are homeless people not human beings? 3. Who do we call for help and trust when it is the police taking the lives of innocent people? [UsmanChaudhry21]

And there are even more questions on Usman’s brother’s blog here.

Here in Los Angeles, hearing stories about LAPD related killings are a dime a dozen, but hearing this story really rips my heart out because everything about it is so close to home. He’s the same age my sister. He might have been at the same Eid prayer I go to. He was shot by the same police department that is supposed to be protecting me. He isn’t the only youth to be killed by LAPD - in 2007 alone 13 “youth” were killed by LAPD. When will the brutality against our youth stop? What can we do to make the LAPD change their tragic ways?

taz at 12:39 AM in In Memoriam · 83 comment(s) · Direct link

May 13, 2008

Warrior-scholar falls

Last week the nation lost Michael Vinay Bhatia to the war in Afghanistan (an IED of course). To say he was a unique breed of “soldier” would be an understatement:

Michael Vinay Bhatia, 31, was serving as a social scientist embedded with troops in the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain Systems program.

HTS program manager Steve Fondacaro said, “He was an example of a brilliant scholar who could have made his job and done well in the U.S., but who of his own accord discovered our program and volunteered to participate as a team member fully understanding the risks. This makes him a hero three, four times over…”

A magna cum laude graduate of Brown University, Bhatia was a doctoral candidate at Oxford University. “He had a lot of integrity as a scholar in terms of studying conflict and its impact on civilians and he was willing to take that into an operational field,” said Sarah Havens, a former Brown classmate. “He was adamant that that was the right thing to do.”

Bhatia’s dream of making a difference also took him to war-torn East Timor. But friends said they believed Bhatia was looking forward to a peaceful life back home. “I got the sense this was the last hurrah for him,” Havens said. “He was building his nest egg and looking for academic positions in the States for when he came back…” [Link]

I first heard about the Human Terrain Systems Program in an NPR story a few months ago (worth listening to). The idea is quite brilliant, the type of idea that our disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could use more of if we want to see a real turn around. The basic purpose of the HTS teams is to learn about the people and customs of a region so that they can advise the military on how to win hearts and minds, not through bluster, but through mutual understanding:

• HTS was developed in response to identified gaps in commanders’ and staffs’ understanding of the local population and culture, and its impact on operational decisions; and poor transfer of specific socio-cultural knowledge to follow-on units.
• The HTS approach is to place the expertise and experience of social scientists and regional experts, coupled with reach-back, open-source research, directly in support of deployed units engaging in full-spectrum operations.
• HTS believes that achieving national security objectives is dependent on understanding the societies and cultures in which we are engaged. [Link]

Among the outpouring of grief and remembrance that arose on various blogs in the past week was this one by a classmate of Bhatia’s at Brown University:

“I wish to pass on some bad news: Michael Bhatia was killed in Afghanistan.”

For twenty minutes, I managed to push it out of my mind and finish my meeting. As soon as I left The Landing, I fell apart.

As the day went on, I talked to other friends and colleagues of Mike’s and gathered more information. Apparently Mike was killed by a roadside bomb in Khost. He was stationed at FOB Salerno and advising the 82nd Airborne Division as part of the Human Terrain program. It was a controversial program and Mike told me he faced some criticism from colleagues for his decision to participate, but ultimately he believed he could do some good.

Mike and I were classmates at Brown, but we didn’t know each other well then. He came back to Providence in 2006 to become a visiting professor at the Watson Institute at Brown and we reconnected. If you google Mike, you’ll read a lot about his scholarly work around the world, especially in Afghanistan. Mike was a true academic, but in many ways he was more like Indiana Jones. Mike didn’t sit around and do research. He spent his time in the field: in Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan and more. Mike was a genius. He was an Oxford scholar, his book The Gun in Afghanistan was just published and there’s no doubt he knew his stuff when it came to international relations. You can find academics and experts around the globe who will sing his praises. They can do a far better job than I can explaining exactly why Mike’s research was so important.

I knew Mike in a far different capacity. To me, he wasn’t an author or a professor or a scholar. To me, he was a friend. For about a year Mike and I hung out on an almost daily basis. Last summer, Mike would come over to my place and we’d drink scotch and play Halo 2 until three in the morning (he’d routinely kick my ass). I would listen to him complain about his job and he’d endure my endless moaning about the trials and tribulations of starting a new company. We would go to the Wickenden Pub with our friend Chris and debate religion or head to the Wild Colonial to commiserate about women. We watched Entourage and Firefly together. Mike was a guy’s guy, a partner in crime. The kind that you could call any day of the week and he’d be down to go out at a moment’s notice. [Link]

Coincidentally, the author of the blog entry above was one of my closest friends growing up.

The best way to understand Bhatia’s work, and the reason why people are mourning the loss of his intelligence as well as his friendship, is to read this photoessay of his published last year.

Another one of his friends wrote in to SM as well:

A scholarship fund was established in Michael’s memory. The purpose of the fund will be to provide opportunities for undergraduates to obtain experiences working abroad similar to those Michael was able to undertake. Although the precise contours of the scholarship will be developed in the coming months, a fund already exists in his name. Those who would like to contribute to this fund may do so by writing checks payable to Brown University, clearly indicating that the gift is in memory of Michael Bhatia, and mailing the contribution to the following address:

Brown University

Gift Cashier

P.O. Box 1877

Providence, RI 02912

abhi at 11:40 PM in In Memoriam, Military, Profiles, Science and Technology · 13 comment(s) · Direct link

March 27, 2008

In Memory of Sameer

Sameer Bhatia passed away peacefully this morning.

The words of Kumar Bhatia, Sameer’s father:

It was difficult to see him suffer like this…It seemed to me that all the prayers, blessings and love form everyone were allowing him to ride the ship of prayers and blessings through turbulent waters which otherwise he would have had to swim through on his own. ~

Sameer, his bride, his loving family and his battalion of devoted friends are in our thoughts and prayers.

anna at 03:05 PM in In Memoriam · 38 comment(s) · Direct link

March 20, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke, RIP (with excerpts from a novel)

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke died earlier this week, at the age of 91. He was one of the best-known sci-fi writers of the 20th century, the author behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, among many others.

As is well-known, Clarke moved to Ceylon/Sri Lanka in 1956 — in large part for the year-around access to diving — and remained there until his death. The locale inspired at least one of Clarke’s novels, Fountains of Paradise:

Clarke lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008, having emigrated there when it was still called Ceylon, first in Unawatuna on the south coast, and then in Colombo. Clarke held citizenship of both the UK and Sri Lanka. He was an avid scuba diver and a member of the Underwater Explorers Club. Living in Sri Lanka afforded him the opportunity to visit the ocean year-round. It also inspired the locale for his novel The Fountains of Paradise in which he described a space elevator. This, he believed, ultimately will be his legacy, more so than geostationary satellites, once space elevators make space shuttles obsolete. (link)

I first read The Fountains of Paradise many years ago, and I pulled it off the shelf this afternoon for a refresher. There is an intense opening, set in the classical period, 2000 years ago, involving a “Prince Kalidasa,” who does not seem to resemble the actual Kalidasa (who was not a prince, but a poet). And there are some rich descriptions of the island of Sri Lanka (named “Taprobane” — Tap-ROB-a-nee — by Clarke).

Here are a few paragraphs from the historical section involving Clarke’s Prince Kalidasa:

The air was so clear today that Kalidasa could see the temple, dwarfed by distance to a tiny white arrowhead on the very summit of Sri Kanda. It did not look like any work of man, and it reminded the king of the still greater mountains he had glimpsed in his youth, when he had been half-guest, half-hostage at the court of Mahinda the Great. All the giants that guarded Mahinda’s empire bore such Crests, formed of a dazzling, crystalline substance for which there was no word in the language of Taprobane. The Hindus believed that it was a kind of water, magically transformed, but Kalidasa laughed at such superstitions.

That ivory gleam was only three days’ march away - one along the royal road, through forests and paddy-fields, two more up the winding stairway which he could never climb again, because at its end was the only enemy he feared, and could not conquer. Sometimes he envied the pilgrims, when he saw their torches marking a thin line of fire up the face of the mountain. The humblest beggar could greet that holy dawn and receive the blessings of the gods; the ruler of all this land could not.

But he had his consolations, if only for a little while. There, guarded by moat and rampart, lay the pools and fountains and Pleasure Gardens on which he had lavished the wealth of his kingdom. And when he was tired of these, there were the ladies of the rock-the ones of flesh and blood, whom he summoned less and less frequently-and the two hundred changeless immortals with whom he often shared his thoughts, because there were no others he could trust.

Thunder boomed along the western sky. Kalidasa turned away from the brooding menace of the mountain, towards the distant hope of rain. The monsoon was late this season; the artificial lakes that fed the island’s complex irrigation system were almost empty. By this time of year he should have seen the glint of water in the mightiest of them all— which, as he well knew, his subjects still dared to call by his father’s name: Paravana Samudra, the Sea of Paravana. It had been completed only thirty years ago, after generations of toil. In happier days, young Prince Kalidasa had stood proudly beside his father, when the great sluice-gates were opened and the life-giving waters had poured out across the thirsty land. In all the kingdom there was no lovelier sight than the gently rippling mirror of that immense, man-made lake, when it reflected the domes and spires of Ranapura, City of Gold-the ancient capital which he had abandoned for his dream.

In this made-up history of the ancient kingdom of Taprobane, Clarke actually seems to know whereof he speaks; the injections of bits of Hindu culture seem to come from a position of knowledge.

And here is a little from the main section of the novel, set in the present day. The protagonist is a Sri Lankan named Raja (short for “Johan Oliver de Alwis Sri Rajasinghe”), who has retired from public life, and moved to an estate built on the site of “Kalidasa’s” original pleasure gardens:

That had been twenty years ago, and he had never regretted his decision. Those who predicted that boredom would succeed where the temptations of power had failed did not know their man or understand his origins. He had gone back to the fields and forests of his youth, and was living only a kilometre from the great, brooding rock that had dominated his childhood. Indeed, his villa was actually inside the wide moat that surrounded the Pleasure Gardens, and the fountains that Kalidasa’s architect had designed now splashed in Johan’s own courtyard, after a silence of two thousand years. The water still flowed in the original stone conduits; nothing had been changed, except that the cisterns high up on the rock were now filled by electric pumps, not relays of sweating slaves.

Securing this history-drenched piece of land for his retirement had given Johan more satisfaction than anything in his whole career, fulfilling a dream that he had never really believed could come true. The achievement had required all his diplomatic skills, plus some delicate blackmail in the Department of Archaeology. Later, questions had been asked in the State Assembly; but fortunately not answered.

He was insulated from all but the most determined tourists and students by an extension of the moat, and screened from their gaze by a thick wall of mutated Ashoka trees, blazing with flowers throughout the year. The trees also supported several families of monkeys, who were amusing to watch but occasionally invaded the villa and made off with any portable objects that took their fancy. Then there would be a brief inter-species war with fire-crackers and recorded danger-cries that distressed the humans at least as much as the simians - who would be back quickly enough, for they had long ago learned that no-one would really harm them.

Reading this, I can’t help but think of Clarke himself, one of the world’s most famous writers, living in a remote part of Sri Lanka — away from it all.

After the opening, the novel has a more conventional science fiction story arc — the goal is to build a kind of massive space elevator from the top of a mountain in Taprobane…

amardeep at 12:50 PM in Fiction, In Memoriam, Literature, Science, Science and Technology · 23 comment(s) · Direct link

February 07, 2008

Everlasting be your memory, Bevin

Bevin Varughese passed away today, in New York.

We posted about his fight with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia back in October, a few weeks after his cancer returned. A bone marrow transplant was his only hope for survival. I wish I had had the time to post more about the drives his determined friends put together, all over the East coast, in order to save their friend.

Bevin never found a match.

After two rounds of chemotherapy, he caught an infection; now he is gone. Many of you lurkers either grew up with him in New York, attended church with him, or knew him from his days as a student at Temple University, in Philadelphia. I’ve heard from a few of you, about this heart-breaking loss:

He fought so hard and was always so positive, with a smile on his face despite enduring the worst of health conditions. He never once complained.

I still remember him from college. I had the biggest honking crush on him but I was too scared to talk to desi guys. He was really nice, though…

I’ve also heard the now-cliched phrases about “the good dying young” but more than that, I’m struck by how gracious and optimistic Bevin was, until the end. I don’t know why we lose certain people, when or how we do, but I do know that we can’t keep letting this happen. I implore you, if you are not already part of the National Marrow Donor Program, to consider becoming a committed donor. It’s too late to save Bevin, but you might save someone else, who is just as loved and cherished.

My thoughts and prayers to his family, friends and the strangers who didn’t even know him personally, but did amazing things like run marathons in his name. May Bevin’s memory be eternal.

anna at 05:01 PM in In Memoriam · 27 comment(s) · Direct link

January 22, 2008

Scrabulous: Dead App Scrabbling

I’ve mentioned it before, but for those of you who weren’t aware, I’m addicted to Scrabulous, the Facebook application which allows me to play multiple games of Scrabble with several of you at the same time, and at our leisure.

Scrabulous is so fabulous, I ditched Friendster and MySpaz out of my desire for it; I had no need for such retrograde networks, not when Facebook was so superior— and the whole basis for its superiority is this stellar timesuck. If you read the message boards on the “official” Save Scrabulous group or under news articles about the game, I’m not the only one who has embraced Facebook out of my nerdier impulses, nor am I the only one who is twitching in a corner, rocking back-and-forth over this:

The saga of Scrabulous is nearing an end…[link]

I can’t bear to contemplate it. Better I edify you as to why this tragedy is occurring. Hasbro is not pleased that their game is suddenly so popular, not when they have no part in the fun. Never mind that they were stupid for not sensing the untapped desire of millions of word-nerds for protracted online Scrabbling, they’re using words like “licensing” and “stealing” to rain on our vocabulary-littered parade.

A flurry of behind the scenes deal-making has been going on between Hasbro, Scrabulous, and Electronic Arts, which has the license in the U.S. to the online version of the game. Hasbro is trying to get Scrabulous to sell itself for a song to Electronic Arts, or else shut down completely by the end of the day today. [link]

The Calcutta-based brothers behind the awesomeness, software developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla are trying to find a way…

Scrabulous has been trying to shop itself to other buyers as well, but its legal liability is scaring away any potential white knights. Unless it gets some sort of reprieve or agrees to sell to Electronic Arts, Scrabulous will be no more, despite the more than 46,000 Facebook members who have joined the “Save Scrabulous” group. What choice does it have, really, but to sell? [link]

Lest you think this is a tiny sort of tempest, consider these numbers:

Scrabulous was started in 2006 as a standalone site operated by a pair of 20-something Calcutta, India-based brothers, Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, but the game exploded when they created a Facebook application that currently boasts 2.3 million active users and soon became the workplace productivity drain du jour. It’s currently the ninth most popular application on the site. [link]

Why can’t Hasbro focus on the good, which is what would benefit me…and you…and every other Scrabbling cubicle monkey?

With no official version of Scrabble available to play online, the move to shut down Scrabulous – which has renewed interest in the board game for a generation more familiar with electronic entertainment – could be seen as counter-productive…

Office worker Nastasia, 32, who plays Scrabulous at home and at work, said she bought a travel edition of the board game to take on holidays.

“We went overseas with some friends so I bought a travel version of Scrabble as I’d forgotten how fun the game was until Facebook revived it,” she said. [link]

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go finish the nine games I’m currently playing. I plan to go out in a blaze of glory, firing until there are no triple-word-scores left, TWL in my right hand, SOWPODS in my left…

anna at 12:58 PM in In Memoriam, Law, News, Tech · 25 comment(s) · Direct link

January 10, 2008

Sir Edmund Hillary (1919 – 2008)

One of the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest is dead at 88. On May 29, 1953 Sir Edmund Percival Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made history.

Snow and wind held up the pair at the South Col for two days. They set out on May 28 with a support trio of (George) Lowe, Alfred Gregory and Ang Nyima. The two pitched a tent at 8,500 metres (27,900 ft) on 28 May while their support group returned down the mountain. On the following morning, Hillary discovered his boots had frozen solid outside the tent. He spent two hours warming them before he and Tenzing attempted the final ascent, wearing 30-pound packs. The crucial move of the last part of the ascent was the 40-foot (12 m) rock face later named the “Hillary Step”. Hillary saw a means to wedge his way up a crack in the face between the rock wall and ice, and Tenzing followed. From there, the following effort was relatively simple. They reached the summit at 11:30 am. As Hillary put it, “A few more whacks of the ice axe in the firm snow, and we stood on top.”

They spent only about 15 minutes at the summit. They unsuccessfully looked for evidence of the earlier Mallory expedition. Hillary took Tenzing’s photo, Tenzing left chocolates in the snow as an offering, and Hillary left a cross that he had been given. [wiki]

His own words (via CNN):

“Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest.

“Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation — these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed,” Hillary noted.

“But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn’t believe it.

He said: “I removed my oxygen mask to take some pictures. It wasn’t enough just to get to the top. We had to get back with the evidence. Fifteen minutes later we began the descent.” [CNN]

Hillary was so humble, he refused to say who had reached the pinnacle of Mount Everest first, until well after his dear friend Norgay passed away. He was diffident, too:

Hillary married Louise Mary Rose on 3 September 1953, soon after the ascent of Everest. A shy man, he relied on his future mother-in-law to propose on his behalf. They had three children: Peter (1954), Sarah (1955), and Belinda (1959).

In 1975, while en route to join Hillary in the village of Phaphlu, where he was helping build a hospital, Louise and Belinda were killed in a plane crash near Kathmandu airport shortly after take-off. [wiki]

Hillary remarried in 1990. Among his many roles in life, he was the Ambassador to India from New Zealand, in the ’80s.

Humble and inspirational:

Hillary summarized it for schoolchildren in 1998, when he said one didn’t have to be a genius to do well in life.

“I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it,” he said before planting some endangered Himalayan oaks in the school grounds.

The planting was part of his program to reforest upland areas of Nepal. [CNN]

Hillary was more interested in contributing to Nepal than receiving glory for his accomplishments.

Hillary never forgot the small mountainous country that propelled him to worldwide fame. He revisited Nepal constantly over the next 54 years.

Without fanfare and without compensation, Hillary spend decades pouring energy and resources from his own fund-raising efforts into Nepal through the Himalayan Trust he founded in 1962.

Known as “burra sahib” — “big man,” for his 6 feet 2 inches — by the Nepalese, Hillary funded and helped build hospitals, health clinics, airfields and schools.

He raised funds for higher education for Sherpa families, and helped set up reforestation programs in the impoverished country. About $250,000 a year was raised by the charity for projects in Nepal.

A strong conservationist, he demanded that international mountaineers clean up thousands of tons of discarded oxygen bottles, food containers and other climbing debris that litter the lower slopes of Everest.

His commitment to Nepal took him back more than 120 times. His adventurer son Peter has described his father’s humanitarian work there as “his duty” to those who had helped him. [CNN]

Everlasting be his memory.

anna at 07:15 PM in In Memoriam · 66 comment(s) · Direct link

September 11, 2007

September 11: Everlasting be their memory.

Six years ago, after the attacks, a Humvee rolled up to my apartment building, which was seven blocks from the White House; we were not allowed to leave, for our own safety.

Six years ago, we entered an age of terror which we are also not allowed to leave, ostensibly for our own safety.

Six years ago, 3,000 innocents boarded a plane or went to work, as if it were any ordinary day; they never returned home.

At 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane struck the North Tower, a bell was sounded, as it has for six years now, and the gathered masses bowed their heads. [NYT]

Let this be a space for remembrance, for respect and for grieving, if you need. Everyone who reads this blog lost something six years ago, even if they didn’t “directly” lose someone in New York, D.C. or Pennsylvania; this space is for your thoughts, on this appositely grim day.

anna at 02:01 PM in History, In Memoriam · 68 comment(s) · 1 reader(s) linked · Direct link

August 01, 2007

Obituary: WIDWNR

MUTINEERS,

I am saddened to report the sudden and unexpected demise of our beloved friend, Whoa— is dating White not right? (July 28, 2007 -August 1, 2007).

Right was born in an indie coffee shop, in the heart of Washington, D.C., via the twin modern miracles of a stickered, 12” iBook and wifi. In his short life, he profoundly affected many mutineers; Right challenged long-held assumptions, enlightened us about dozens of subjects and was a welcoming, tolerant figure in our community. He will be missed.

In lieu of flowers, Right’s grieving family humbly requests that when SM does its annual plea for donations to keep the site going, a la PBS/NPR, you contribute a rupee or two in his memory, especially since his Mother HATES ADS AND WILL NEVER AGREE TO HAVING THEM ON THIS SITE.

::

I had to close the uber-thread. :(

Many of you are writing to me, letting me know that you can no longer access it. Not sure what’s going on, but I can’t see new comments, either, which means I can’t moderate…so unfortunately, the party is over…not that I needed to do a lot of moderating in the first place. :)

I am delighted; considering the provocative subject material, there was far less ickiness, trolling or flaming than one might expect. All credit for that goes to you.

Thanks for one of the most lively, fascinating and relevant discussions we’ve ever had— and don’t fret, my pets…plenty of you left comments which could be spun off in to so many different threads, about queer dating, seduction via bharatnatyam, evaluating what’s worse— emasculation or exoticization, outting Iyengars, South Asian inter-religious/regional relationships, where to find B-Boy/punker Punjabis, how to procure puliyodarai, internalized self-hatred as evidenced by externalized comment-stupidity, whether I-Bankers are evil, where to find the mythical straight-haired, hyper-maintained desi goddesses whose knickers disintegrate for private equity types, San Francisco’s alternately sucky/fantastic dating scene and of course, HAIR.

More of all that, soon. In the meanwhile, pour a little sum’n out for “Right”, the next time libations are flowing. Sigh. Time to cue Tupac:

Rest in peace young homie, there’s a heaven for a G…

anna at 12:22 PM in Blog, Humor, In Memoriam · 302 comment(s) · Direct link

July 26, 2007

"Trashed" Grandmother Passes Away.

A heart-breaking update to my previous post, “On Respect for our Elders”:

A SICK 75-year-old grandmother who was thrown in the garbage by her relatives in India last week has died, officials say.

Chinnammal Palaniappan, died on Sunday in a home for elderly people where she was taken after being rescued from the garbage dump in Erode town, 400km from Chennai, capital of southern Tamil Nadu state.

Palaniappan had told her rescuers that on July 19 she was taken from her home by her grandsons and on waking up found herself among a heap of rotting garbage.

“She was improving after she was fed and given necessary medicines in the facility but on Sunday evening she developed breathing problems and died,” an official said.

Thanks for posting this to the news tab, Anonymous. At least she’s finally at peace.

If anyone hears news regarding the worthless family who did this despicable deed, please let us know. I can’t be the only one who is interested in their fate, and how the TN government proceeds with this tragic case.

anna at 12:05 PM in In Memoriam, Issues, News, Short · 25 comment(s) · Direct link

July 11, 2007

One Year Ago Today, a Tragedy in Bombay

July 11, 2006.
Seven bombs explode in eleven minutes, slaughtering 209 innocent commuters and injuring 700 others.

The first blast went off at about 1830 local time (1300 GMT), during the rush hour. Correspondents spoke of scenes of pandemonium, with people jumping from trains and bodies flung onto tracks.

An eyewitness at Mahim told the BBC some of those who had jumped from the train were run over by another train coming in the opposite direction.

The force of the blasts ripped doors and windows off carriages, and scattered luggage. Clothes and shoes were strewn along the tracks. [BBC]

Pressure cookers with 2.5kg of RDX each were placed on trains plying on the western line of the suburban (“local”) train network, which forms the backbone of the city’s transport network…All the bombs had been placed in the first-class “general” compartments (some compartments are reserved for women, called “ladies” compartments) of several trains running from Churchgate, the city-centre end of the western railway line, to the western suburbs of the city. They exploded at or in the near vicinity of the suburban railway stations of Matunga Road, Mahim, Bandra, Khar Road, Jogeshwari, Bhayandar and Borivali. [wiki]

We covered it last year, here.

Today, Uberdesi asks why only certain victims of terrorism get memorialized. Reading their post reminded me of the horrible significance of this date and I thank them for the unintended nudge.

anna at 04:00 PM in In Memoriam · 58 comment(s) · Direct link

July 03, 2007

May You Finally be at Peace [UPDATED, Sadly]

A little over a month ago, I wrote a post about a Muslim youth who had cut the hair of a Sikh peer, during a fight in their high school bathroom. You may recall it— I asked you if this was a hate crime and many of you responded, some by saying “yes”, others “no”. The utility of hate crimes legislation was also debated; weren’t all violations worthy of condemnation? What if penalizing hate crimes really meant prosecuting thought crimes?

I thought of all of this, today. I was moderating a link on our news tab by clicking it, to make sure it worked. This takes less than a second, but sometimes, I linger for an extra moment on whatever news site you’ve submitted, especially if there’s another story which captures my attention (I’m powerless against the “most emailed” list).

“Survivor of Hate Crime Takes Own Life”, it said. Or something similar. I realized that David Ritcheson, 18, was dead, a year after he probably should have been. A comment from the post I referenced above came back to me:

I wouldn’t classify this as a crime… a little hair cut doesn’t hurt. He wasn’t sodomized for crying out loud. Plus, these were kids. Kids can be more sadistic than adults at times. Its actually somewhat normal for a pre-teen to be sadistic… part of the maturation process. This was peer pressure, not a hate crime. Whoever cut the Sikh fellow’s hair did to retain his status among the peer group. [Link]

Well, David was sodomized, for crying out loud. He wasn’t just sexually assaulted, he was brutalized. Stomped. Burned. Kicked. And as he lay on the ground, naked and dying, his attackers poured bleach on him. Why? He tried to kiss a 12-year old white girl, who was not related to either of his murderers.

Who was David?

David Ritcheson had been a running back on the Klein Collins High School football team. He was homecoming prince as a freshman and had a girlfriend. He “hung out with the good crowd,” he says, and had every reason to look forward to returning last fall.

But once classes resumed, Ritcheson was overwhelmed by the looks he got everywhere he went — in the halls, in the cafeteria, in classrooms.

The looks all said the same thing: You’re a victim, how do you deal with it? Everybody knew what had happened to him, and the attack, he says, “was just so degrading.”

In a case that drew national attention, Ritcheson, a Mexican-American, was severely assaulted last April 23 by two youths while partying in Spring. One of the attackers, a skinhead named David Tuck, yelled ethnic slurs and kicked a pipe up his rectum, severely damaging his internal organs and leaving Ritcheson in the hospital for three months and eight days — almost all of it in critical care. [Houston Chronicle]

Here are his own words, which were uttered at a hearing on H.R. 1592, The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007; he testified, in an effort to wrest some good from his pain.

I appear before you as a survivor of one of the most despicable, shocking, and heinous acts of hate violence this country has seen in decades. Nearly one year ago on April 22, 2006, I was viciously attacked by two individuals because of my heritage as a Mexican-American…a minor disagreement between me and the attackers turned into the pretext for what I believe was a premeditated hate crime. This was a moment that would change my life forever. After I was surprisingly sucker punched and knocked out, I was dragged into the back yard for an attack that would last for over an hour. Two individuals, one an admitted racist skinhead, attempted to carve a swastika on my chest. Today I still bear that scar on my chest like a scarlet letter. After they stripped me naked, I was burned with cigarettes and savagely kicked by this skinhead’s steel toed army boots. After burning me in the center of the forehead, the skinhead attacker was heard saying that now I looked like an Indian with the red dot on my forehead.

Moreover, the witnesses to the attack recalled the two attackers calling me a “wetback” and a ‘spic” as they continued to beat me as I lay unconscious.

Weeks later I recall waking up in the hospital with a myriad of emotions, including fear and uncertainty. Most of all, I felt inexplicable humiliation. Not only did I have to face my peers and my family, I had to face the fact that I had been targeted for violence in a brutal crime because of my ethnicity. This crime took place in middle-class America in the year 2006. The reality that hate is alive, strong, and thriving in the cities, towns, and cul-de-sacs of Suburbia, America was a surprise to me. America is the country I love and call home. However, the hate crime committed against me illustrates that we are still, in some aspects, a house divided. I know now that there are young people in this country who are suffering and confused, thirsting for guidance and in need of a moral compass. These are some of the many reasons I am here before you today asking that our government take the lead in deterring individuals like those who attacked me from committing unthinkable and violent crimes against others because of where they are from, the color of their skin, the God they worship, the person they love, or the way they look, talk or act.

I believe that education can have an important impact by teaching against hate and bigotry. In fact, I have encouraged my school and others to adopt the Anti-Defamation League’s No Place for Hate® program. If these crimes cannot be prevented, the federal government must have the authority to support state and local bias crime prosecutions. [Hearing on H.R. 1592]

::

Whither hate crimes legislation? Two of you discussed it, on the “Rape of the Lock” thread.

Affirmative:

why are “hate crimes” punished harsher than other crimes? I owuld think the punishment should be the same thing for the same crime regardless? Any lawyers here that can explain that better?

There are different justifications for hate crimes. It terrorizes the group to which the victim belongs because the perpetrator targeted the victim because of his membership in that particular group. It has the component of additional malice beyond the ones already codified in law. It also comes handy in cases of religious discrimination, for example, in the absence of this law, yanking off a cap from a persons head would be punishable at the same level as yanking off a hijab from a Muslim womans head or a turban from a Sikh mans head. [link]

Negative:

…more fundamentally, hate crimes are thought crimes…ie, they give extra punishment due to a person’s ideas and beliefs. now the particular beliefs in question are repulisive so few complain, but if the govt is allowed to give extra punishment to racists, could they do the same for communists? how about feminists? first they came for the racists…slippery slope.

there are first ammedment issues here and while such laws may pass constitutional muster they certainly go against her spirit. this is not the american way. it’s orwells. [link]

Is it?

::

More than anything, he didn’t want to stand out, to be identified as “that kid”, the one who was sodomized and attacked so brutally. He required 30 surgeries, all of which couldn’t put David back together again. He was an imperfect teenager, a football player, a former homecoming prince, a model in the school fashion show. The last thing he wanted to be was a spokesperson. But he stepped up, to address Congress:

despite the obvious bias motivation of the crime, it is very frustrating to me that neither the state of Texas nor the federal government was able to utilize hate crime laws on the books today in the prosecution of my attackers. I am upset that neither the Justice Department nor the FBI was able to assist or get involved in the investigation of my case because “the crime did not fit the existing hate crime laws.” Today I urge you to take the lead in this time of needed change and approve the “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007”. I was fortunate to live in a town where local law enforcement authorities had the resources, the ability — and the will – to effectively investigate and prosecute the hate violence directed against me. But other bias crime victims may not live in such places. I ask you to provide authority for local law enforcement to work together with federal agencies when someone is senselessly attacked because of where they are from or because of who they are. Local prosecutors should be able to look to the federal government for support when these types of crimes are committed. Most importantly, these crimes should be called what they are and prosecuted for what they are, “hate crimes”! [Hearing on H.R. 1592]

David was straight, but he worked for justice, for all:

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, for which Ritcheson testified, would include protection for gay individuals in the statutes that now apply to acts of violence against individuals on the basis of race, religion color or national origin. The new act would augment local law enforcement with federal resources. The bill passed in the House in May and is being considered in the Senate.

This and other hate crime measures affirm the value of the lives of individuals who have been the targets of hate-filled crimes and affirm that the psychological dimensions of these crimes have a different impact on society as well as on the victims.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, hopes to name the hate crimes bill “David’s Law.” An equally fitting legacy would be a brighter glimmer of recognition throughout the culture that the aftereffects can be as devastating as the trauma itself. [Houston Chronicle]

::

Many rape survivors don’t dare come forward, because of their shame. That shame is magnified if you are a man who was assaulted. David was practically a child.

“it was just really hard to hold your head up, even to walk outside with everyone almost in the world knowing what happened.” That anguish may have contributed to his decision to leap Sunday from a cruise ship to his death in the Gulf of Mexico.

“I shouldn’t care what people think or say. It’s just the fact that everyone knows I’m the kid. It was bigger than Houston. It was bigger than Texas. It was bigger than America. Everybody in the world knew what had happened and everybody knew the details of it.”

In the end, it was bigger than he was; in the end, it meant his end, by suicide.

On Sunday, he was pronounced dead after being pulled aboard the Ecstasy, a cruise ship en route from Galveston to Cozumel, Mexico.

A spokesman for Carnival Cruise Lines said several witnesses saw Ritcheson jump from an upper deck of the ship Sunday morning. Officials aboard the Ecstasy notified the Coast Guard before recovering Ritcheson’s body. [ABC News]

::

What motivates the perpetrators of such vile, naked hatred?

It was a level of rage and fury that could prompt his attackers to drag the victim, a 16-year-old Hispanic youth, out of a party for the trivial offense of trying to kiss a 12-year-old girl, to strip him and beat him into submission, using steel-toed boots. They made deep slashes into his chest, investigators said. Then they drove a sharpened plastic PVC pipe into his anus so deep that his internal organs were damaged. And as the heartless attackers carried out this savagery, they spewed racial slurs.

The suspects are both Anglo. Neighbors told the Houston Chronicle one of them, David Henry Tuck, 18, has swastikas painted on the fence at his home. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Tuck flew a swastika flag. Also under arrest is Keith Robert Turner, 17. Kids described both as “skinheads.”

The 16-year-old victim, David Ritcheson, is popular at his high school, played football and was once featured in a fashion layout in the school yearbook. But the intent of the attack, as has been seen in other such assaults, was to strip him of his personal identity and degrade him to an object that could be insulted and sodomized…history tells us it is far easier to target those who are different in appearance, in background and in language. And we know that racial slurs that stereotype people and deny individuality are but the first step to giving license for barbarity against a whole people, something that would never be countenanced against a person with a face. [Corpus Christi Caller]

::

Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story. It has been a blessing to know that the most terrible day of my life may help put another human face on the campaign to enact a much needed law such as the “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007”. I can assure you, from this day forward I will do what ever I can to help make our great county, the United States of America, a hate free place to live. [Hearing on H.R. 1592]

Oh, David. In your desire to emancipate yourself from your nightmare, you may have done just that, by inpsiring compassion and creating awareness. I just wish we hadn’t lost you, that you hadn’t lost you, in the process. May your memory be eternal, may you finally know peace.

::

An UPDATE I wish I had never come across:

I didn’t think this story could get any worse, but it turns out that despite the three hours I spent researching/writing this post, what I gleaned was not the whole, sickening truth. Not even close. I am grateful to XicanoPwr at !Para Justicia y Libertad!, for publishing the rest of the vomit-inducing, soul-crushing story (via the 2007 Jan/Feb edition of Journal of the Texas District & County Attorneys Association, which changed David’s name because he was a minor— that’s why it is in parentheses below). WARNING- THIS IS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC:

Tuck and Turner began kicking, beating, and stomping (David), Tuck wearing black, steel-toe boots, one of which was emblazoned with a swastika. Yelling “Beaner!” and other racial epithets, Tuck inflicted most of the damage. After one especially vicious kick, Tuck shouted “White power!” and gave a Nazi salute. Unable to fight back or defend himself in any way, (David) just lay there and took it, mumbling and groaning occasionally. Undeterred, or more accurately encouraged by the lack of resistance, Tuck and Turner began stripping off (David)’s clothing.

“If you had any white in you, you would be helping me,” Tuck told Gus. He then pulled out a silver pocketknife. When Gus started to protest, Tuck only glared at him. “Don’t bitch out on me now,” he told the frightened Gus, and began slashing at (David)’s bare chest. He was making superficial wounds, almost as if he was trying to draw something. Detectives would later come to believe Tuck was attempting to carve a swastika.

Taking the cigarette, [Tuck] began touching the tip of it to (David)’s bare skin, burning him on the arms, legs, back, and buttocks. Turner lit up another cigarette and joined in. Finally, Turner put the cigarette out right between (David)’s eyes. Tuck chuckled, “Now he looks like a f***ing Hindu!”

(David) could no longer speak because Tuck had stomped on his throat hard enough to break one of his tracheal rings. All he could manage was a weak, agonized moan. He lay there a few feet from the patio, naked and helpless. And now it was Turner who had an idea.

Walking over to the patio table where Gus was, Turner grabbed a pipe standing in the center of it. It was a white pipe made of PVC that served as the lower half of some long-forgotten umbrella. … The lower half abruptly tapered to a sinister, conical point. Turner carried it over to where (David) lay facedown on the ground.

Squatting beside him, Turner shoved the white pole between (David)’s buttocks and into his rectum, making sure that the sharp point was inside the anus. He then looked up at Tuck and, holding the pole with the blunt end angled upward, motioned with his head. Taking the invitation, Tuck viciously stomped on the blunt end of the pole with the bottom of his combat boot as hard as he could. (David) moaned sharply. Turner laughed. Tuck stomped the pole a second time even harder. Doctors later estimated that the pointed pipe went 8–10 inches inside (David)’s body, rupturing his bladder and colon in the process.

While Turner tossed (David)’s shoes over the fence and began burning his clothing in a barbecue grill, Tuck returned to a frightened Gus. “Do you have any bleach?” he demanded. “We’ve got to get rid of the evidence.” Gus shook his head no, but Tuck knew where the laundry room was and went inside to look for himself. He returned with a full bottle and a warning glare for Gus. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you,” he said, walking to the edge of the backyard where (David) lay, the pole still inside him. Turner joined him there.

Taking the cap off the bleach, Tuck poured the bottle into (David)’s face, eyes, and open mouth. He poured bleach all over (David)’s naked body, poured it down the pipe and into his traumatized abdomen as well. (Even seven months later at the trial, (David) still had visible areas of skin the bleach had burned off. The physicians who treated him did not think that bleach could account for the reaction they saw in (David)’s immune system. They believe other chemicals, perhaps something like acetone, were poured on and in him.)

I am weeping.

When I originally wrote this post, I remember thinking over and over again that I was so grateful that David had passed out and that he remembered none of this brutality. What is haunting is, some say that he was starting to recall what happened to him, and that would more than explain why he took his life, at least to me. I can’t fathom such evil, I can’t believe that it happened now, and here, and not during some other, primitive time, in some other, faraway place. But Hitler inspired these two monsters and they tried their best to emulate his despicable hatred towards “others”.

I don’t know if David was Catholic. I don’t know if it matters, it probably doesn’t. I am Christian. I’m not Catholic, I’m Orthodox, but I spent my life in Catholic schools where we were constantly told that suicide was a sin. Well, I believe two things now:

1) David lived through that hellish night so he could bear witness. Why else would he be spared the mercy of death, especially when there were so many things inflicted upon him, which might cause it?

2) Unlike what those somber nuns repeated ad infinitum, this can’t be a sin, this wholly understandable desire to escape such all-encompassing pain. Even Christ himself wasn’t tortured like this, before his crucifixion. That’s sick. It is sick when I think that some way of dying/being murdered is WORSE than being nailed to a cross.

You may disagree or scoff at what I just typed, but even if you are an atheist, an agnostic or whatever else, I know you share my horror at what this poor child was subjected to at the hands of two heartless, depraved demons.

I just can’t stop crying, or shaking. My heart hurts. What is wrong with us? How could this happen?

anna at 07:00 PM in In Memoriam, Issues, Law, News, Profiles · 138 comment(s) · Direct link

May 16, 2007

R.I.P Guiatree Hardat

It’s hard to imagine something worse for a parent than having to cremate their own child. Today Sukhdeo Hardat of Queens has to do just that after his daughter’s policeman ex-fiancé shot her to death in the middle of the street with his service pistol.

He refused to let go

Harry Rupnarine joined the NYPD two years ago as a transit police officer. Soon thereafter, while in uniform, he met Guiatree Hardat and became her first serious boyfriend. She had just come to the USA from Guyana, and was studying at Queens College to become a math teacher. He was older, possessive and controlling:

The possessive cop wanted to keep so close an eye on his girlfriend that he often called her a dozen or more times a day. Rupnarine, 37, constantly nagged Guiatree Hardat, 22, to marry him. He was angry that she wanted to wait until she finished college. [Link]

They broke up, but got back together again. Unfortunately, things hadn’t changed much:

Just a week ago, he flipped out when she asked him to come in the kitchen and talk to her while she did some household chores.”Your attention can’t be in two places at once!” he told her, according to Hardat’s relatives. “You must listen to me!”. [Link]

They went out to dinner last Thursday, as Rupnarine tried to patch things back up, but it didn’t work. She called her father at 7:08 PM to ask for a ride, then called him back to say she would take the bus home. He worried:

But Hardat, 46, felt uneasy about his daughter and headed out to find her. Her cell phone kept going straight to voice mail, and when she finally picked up, he heard her final words. “Go away!” the father remembers her daughter yelling at Rupnarine. “I hate you! I hate you!”

The call ended at that point, and by the time Hardat arrived at the scene, just past 7:45 p.m., Rupnarine was in handcuffs and Hardat’s daughter was dead on the ground in a pool of blood. [Link]

Rupnarine claimed that he had accidentally shot Hardat while fighting crime:

Rupnarine … called 911 after killing his girlfriend, then tried to pretend he accidentally shot her while fending off robbers. “Two guys with a knife robbed me,” Rupnarine said to responding police officers, according to a statement of his read aloud at his arraignment. “I turned toward her and I shot her. I’m on the job. Please get the guys who robbed me.”

But Rupnarine’s account, authorities said, was contradicted by a number of witnesses, and he was arrested by Internal Affairs investigators within an hour and charged with second-degree murder. [Link]

What makes this especially bitter for her relatives is that since Rupnarine’s parents had died, they had welcomed him into their family. Now her father feels betrayed:

“This guy, his parents passed on,” he said. “I offered, ‘Let us be a guide to your life.’ ” He added in disgust, “He ruined his own life. My daughter is gone, there is no turning back…” [Link]

Guiatree Hardat is to be cremated today.

ennis at 12:44 PM in In Memoriam, News · 133 comment(s) · Direct link

April 17, 2007

Mint Chocolate Ice Cream and Pretty Earrings: In Memory of Minal

Dearest Choti Behan,

Mint chocolate Ice Cream and pretty earrings, that’s my wish for you little Minal.

surabhi: minu is nothing like neone u wd hv met b4,..she is unique..one in a zillion..shes the greatest friend..u dont know her well enough if u havent heard her brilliant witty jokes..she has a style of her own…she is fun..she wants so much from life..a beach of her own..a bike..a musician guy..chocolate-mint icecream…lots of pretty earrings…and i wish that she gets all of it. i have learnt so much from her..i am just blessed to have a friend like her..i am so proud of her..of what she has achieved and i absolutely love her!!!! [orkut testimonial]

I hope you thrill to the crisp sweetness of white cream flecked with chocolate chips for all of eternity (white because if it’s green ice cream, it’s artificially colored, and I would only let you eat the finest). I hope that when you set your spoon down by your old-fashioned ice cream dish at whatever celestial cafe you are at, it is only so that you may open little boxes, filled with glittering earrings so lovely, they steal your breath and replace it with delight. I hope that every little box which is tied with a perfect bow is given to you by a “musician guy” as your friend Surabhi would put it, since that’s what you like. And I hope he looks at you with eyes brimming over with love, because you must know this by now— you are loved. So very loved. I cried at how loved you are, when I scrolled through every single scrap left at your Orkut profile.

I felt my throat constrict when I read

Hearing ur name from yesterday dear. 1 Billion n more people prayers r with you along my prayers. Hope you are found soon. Oh God help her.

…which was left by someone who actually changed their screen name to “Pray For Minal”, just for you. All for you. I acknowledged the faith you inspired

hi ya.. just got messages from my friend.. hope you are well.. I am not hoping; I belive you are all right.. reply…take care..

and then I saw the following, which is what forced the tears that had merely been hovering in front of my eyes to spill down my cheeks, in to my lap—

Heyy minal wassup - ! i’l get ya pani - puri’s wen r ya back. take care

But you’ll never gobble another golgoppa, will you? You won’t giggle when water streams down your chin if you weren’t careful, you will never again hear a glorious crunch while salt/sweetness/spice/sourness collide in your happy mouth. This gentle “bribe” for your reply wasn’t successful. But the mere fact that it was made destroyed me, even as I knew I must be feeling nothing relative to the pain your pani-puri-profferer is in.

And then there was this, which encapsulated a truth which filled me with wonder, because I knew in my gut it was true, that instead of being glued to India vs. Pakistan (which you would have watched, yes, you would), a whole, huge nation was horrified by the words and pictures streaming out of Virginia.

Hey Minal,
The entire country is praying for your well being!
Take care

Once, when someone fell in love with me, they created an entire Orkut community based on a very precious inside joke, so I know how significant such a thing is, in the wonderland-like world of social networking programs. Someone who loves you did the same, but I wish with every cell in my body that they were doing it for any purpose but…

We started a community for Minal Panchal, the Indian missing @ Virginia Tech….Do join it and pass it on to ur friends

To view the ‘Praying for Minal’ community page, visit: http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=30876137

So what I am looking at is a love story, as told by virtual bits and pieces of care left by strangers on a pale blue page created by a Googler during his “20 percent time”. When Orkut Buyukkotken pondered connecting others as he roamed about the Googleplex, could he have possibly known that thousands of Indians would flock to your profile and write prayers for your safety, pleas for your very life? My eyes touch the screen as if it were braille, as I try to understand who you were by being mindful of what you chose to reveal about yourself, what you might have been attempting to convey. A Web 2.0 timesuck transforms to become a 24-hour a day vigil for a girl from Bombay, then it serves as her memorial in cyberspace.

The CNN-IBN article which confirmed your loss borrowed your profile pic, I think. I know, because I did that too for this post. I wonder if their journalists lingered over your words, your tastes, your choices, your interests. I looked at which groups you chose to affiliate yourself with, because I always thought that mine said so much about me. And I wanted to know you, in some tiny yet real way. So I saw:

Our Lady Of Remedy High School - Batch 1996

Rizvi College of Architecture

Sustainable Architecture

Santiago Calatrava

…and I got a sliver of a sense of you. Architect. I usually swoon for architects, but today I tripped over that date, instead. 1996. Your batch. You are my little sister’s age. The second my mind made that connection, tears fell again. Because to me, she will always be a baby, even if she nears 30…and that means someone must think of you that way, too. I know someone does— your older sister, Kavita. How I weep for her, since I cannot bear to contemplate a life without the little girl who followed me around until I was an adult; how can your didi? How could any of us? You are so very loved, Minal. All little sisters and brothers are.

Over a billion people prayed for you; several dozen probably knew you well and shed far more tears for you than hyper-emotional I did. After all, you are not just someone’s sister, you are someone’s daughter, in fact, your Mother was coincidentally visiting the U.S. when her life became this nightmare. When she goes home, she takes with her the devastating knowledge that you will never return to it again. You will never eat her cooking or snap at her when she annoys you as all Mothers do; you will never sleep in your childhood bed.

I know what that bitter epiphany feels like, and I know that it violently rips the middle out of the word “home”. It has to. Those letters are the sound from which the entire universe is created. Your poor Mother, her universe has shattered, for she has lost you. My Mother once told me that no parent wants to outlive their child, that it’s not right, it’s not fair and I think of you again. It’s not right. It’s not fair.

Who am I to write about you? Why do I feel any connection to you at all, no matter how tenuous? Is it because you and I are exactly the same height? Is it because we might have been able to tell each other which shades of lipstick to avoid? Or is it just because I am haunted by my own loss, my own neverending nightmare, my own tragedy which is so different, especially in magnitude from yours, but it is still crippling for me. I am now beyond familiar with apparitions, guilt and unexplainable moments when what I feel races far past what I know, so I think I have answered my own questions. If “death” were on Orkut, I’d be on their buddy list.

But this is about you, dear girl. Sweet, sensitive, shy, intensely-creative-you. “Brilliant” and “so respectful of her elders”- you. You who will now eat mint chocolate ice cream every day, all day, as much as you want— and my irrational, anguished mind thinks of cavities you will never get, for angels never need to go to the dentist. Again, I have to appreciate your taste— that’s one of my favorite flavors, too. And I also collect earrings. I have a pair I liked so much, I accidentally bought them again, for the second time in six months. They are beautiful. I sincerely wish I could give them to you. I am convinced you would have loved them.

What else did you love? You once typed

assertiveness, candlelight, intelligence, sarcasm, thunderstorms

and then you outlined even more about yourself:

passions: my work, architecture, buildings, nature, architecture……

…your greatest passion in life, mentioned twice. Duly noted.

You would have been popular among our World Cup-mad mutineers:

sports: not into sports except for swimming occassionally, like to watch cricket sometimes.

If we were friends, I would have gently made fun of your love for Hari Puttar…

books: all of harry potter series, little women, sphere, timeline, to kill a mocking bird.

…but I would’ve given you earrings too, to buy your forgiveness. I would’ve asked if you had that one remix of “Be With You”, since none of my Pitchfork-reading friends will admit to owning it…

music: old hindi, r.d. burman, soft rock, enrique… and any fast music while at work.

And I would have lobbied for the first and last, but not middle if we were going out to dinner:

cuisines: indian, chinese, italian…

I brood and I type this and I know why I am doing it; I want you to be real. I want you to be more than that “Indian student who died in Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech”. I want someone to feel what I did, when I read this comment about the other visible brown victim of this tragedy. I want you to be more than— I am ashamed to type this—a bullet point or a statistic, but I have already seen you reduced to both, because your life was stolen by the former. I want that grainy picture of you that is being linked everywhere to be supplanted by memories of the amazing human you obviously were. I want you to be Minal, not a victim.

And because of that obstinate hope on my part, I want you to be thought of and remembered here, in my virtual home, if only for a moment. Because everyone who was lost on 04.16.07 deserves such respect and contemplation. And I’m reading profiles of other victims, people who were from the DC Metro area, because that’s the logical thing to do— memorialize those whom you live near, because you have something in common with them. Well, a few thousand of us at this big brown blog have some things in common with you, though none of us has ever met you. And I just wanted you to know that we are so sorry you are gone. That you broke our collective hearts, because we see you now and we are stunned at what was lost.

Every victim is being mourned, but some are being “remembered more” than others; it’s not fair, but none of this is…and such unevenness is merely the way it all works. I just wanted to do what I could, for you. It was the least I could do, for you, my little sister whose life should have continued here instead of above.

As we say in my Greek Orthodox faith: “May your memory be eternal.” May your last few moments have been painless, if that was at all possible, out of divine mercy. May your life have been filled with happiness and sweetness, not regret. May your loved ones eventually feel serenity. May a senseless calamity like the one which deprived our world of you never happen again. And may heaven really be like Orkut for you Minal, since more than a social networking timepass which allowed me to see a fraction of you, it is an old Turkish word which means “city of happiness, pleasure, joy”. I wish you bliss in your Orkut, wherever you are, choti behan. Be at peace.

Love,

A K K A

::

Thanks, brown_fob.

CNN-IBN: Virginia Tech’s missing Indian student dead

anna at 07:07 PM in In Memoriam, News, Profiles · 99 comment(s) · 1 reader(s) linked · Direct link

He was a God of his subjects

Unfortunately Engineering Professors never get their proper due in life…

Professor G V Loganathan of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering was teaching in a class in the Norris Hall - one of the crime scenes - when the gunman went on rampage.

His colleague Prof Raman Kumar confirmed the news of Loganathan’s death to CNN-IBN.

According to Raman, Loganathan was taking a lecture when the second shooting occurred. He was killed around 0915 hrs (local time), Raman confirmed.

When CNN-IBN contacted a shaken Raman, he was at Lognathan’s residence and said he got the confirmation from the authorities at the University. [Link]

If you click on the picture above it will take you to a video clip of reporters in India going into more detail about the Professor.

Loganathan first became a member of the Virginia Tech community in 1982 and has since earned several honors, including the Outstanding Faculty Award, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Civil Engineering Education. Loganathan has also served the academic community as a member of the faculty senate, a counselor on the honor court, and as associate editor of the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering.

Loganathan received his bachelor’s degree from Madras University, his master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, and his doctorate from Purdue University. [Link]

I went to “Rate My Professor” to learn about Loganathan from the student’s perspective. Just one rating there:

He is God of his subjects… [Link]

And let him be remembered that way.

abhi at 01:12 AM in In Memoriam, News · 90 comment(s) · Direct link

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