To remember is to relive the trauma. Of reconstructing the event and wishing it had a different end. But death has a finality that sooner or later one has to accept. And the families who lost their dear ones to the tragedy—a sister, a brother, a husband, a daughter—are still grappling with the personal loss. Arun Venugopalan speaks to bereaved Indians in New York:
Eva Narula on sister Manika, 22
There is an urgency to Eva's words, a rushing forth of moments past.
"This year's been a lot about denial," says Eva. "We can't face
up to it."
We are in a booth at Martino's, a pizzeria in King's Park, an hour outside
New York City. Eva fusses over a paper napkin, rolls it up, tears a piece of it, rubbing
it between her thumb and index finger like raw cotton, until she produces a thin braid.
Eva waits for her younger sister Manika or Mona to show up any day now. After all, she
calculates, it's impossible Mona could have made it to work by 8.48 am, when the
first WTC tower was hit. The train pulls into Penn Station at 8.08 am, and it takes
another 20-25 minutes to take the subway downtown. On September 11, though, their train
arrived at Penn Station at 8.23 am. Eva dashed off without the usual hug. Mona, she
reasons, would have taken her own time to make the transfer. And then, at the WTC, it
would have taken her five or ten minutes to fish her ID card out of the handbag. "She
was so messy. That was the only thing we fought about."
Earlier, we had stood on a small cliff, overlooking the Long Island Sound. Locals call
it The Bluff. Eva had pointed to the shoreline below, saying, "We would go down there
and stand on the plank. It would rock back and forth, so we felt like we were on a
boat."
The Bluff was their retreat, somewhere they could chat or even run away to, as Mona had
for one brief moment, when she was 16. Mona wanted to be a star. The next Madhuri. Cantor
Fitzgerald was where she made a living, in equities, but whenever possible, she would
dance. "We'd be a duet at all the parties. She'd wear the bindi and
chudiyan, everything."
Mona would spend her weekends at a beauty parlour, Hamara, learning the trade. Her
father had told her he'd buy her a beauty salon, and Mona had hoped to leave Cantor
in October.
Eva swats at the gnats in her face. "We hate bugs. We're so scared of
them," she says. "But she'd get really spiritual and talk about what it all
meant. And I'd say 'Shut up, Mona.'"
Mona and Eva were like twins, though four years separated them. They shared a bedroom
at their parents' house, shared clothes, went together to the store just to buy milk.
"We all knew Mona was everything for us," said Eva, as we drove away from The
Bluff. "She was our raunak—the happy, jolly, fun type of energy.
That's what she was."