Golf enthusiasts are a curious breed. It’s not enough that they should spend entire weekends watching golf on TV, or endlessly deliberating the finer points of sand traps; they must also plan their vacations around exotic locales which have the ultimate golf courses. So it was with Neil Shastri.

On his honeymoon in Hawaii (in 2001), Neil ran off to the links, leaving his unsuspecting wife Kruti at the pool. The second time, he brought her along, only to have her videotape every stroke of his. "So that he could analyse his shot over and over and over again," recalls Kruti, with the tested patience of a golf wife. "It was either his shot or his putting or how far he was driving."

Neil was also a profoundly generous man. The 25-year-old consultant was compassionate towards the homeless in a city where it’s possible to simply go about your own business. It was in this spirit that Neil’s family and friends created the Neil G. Shastri Foundation. For an upcoming date, the foundation has managed to combine two seemingly incongruous qualities of his—golfing and compassion—by organising a charity golf event. This comes on the heels of another event the foundation organised: the Neil G. Shastri Ride for Love.

A foundation is not an easy thing to pull off. There is a good deal of fund-raising and legal work involved, and should you relax at any point of time, you only hurt the name of the person you originally sought to preserve. But the payoff is considerable. More than the good deeds that are performed, it is a way of saying that the person who died is actually quite alive, and that everyone will remember who he was.

"Talking about him helps. You never will forget," Kruti says, pointing at herself, "but you also don’t want other people to forget." So what will she do on September 11? "It’s not a day that will just come and go," she says. "It’s adding salt to the wounds but I realise it’s important to observe it." But one thing she is sure about. "I won’t have television on that day."

Neil was working for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor when the first tower was hit. When he last spoke to Kruti, she said he complained of breathing difficulty. We are seated near the window of a Starbucks coffee shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is a Sunday morning; people are lazing about, reading the papers. Kruti is in the process of shifting to a new home. She had been staying with her parents in New Jersey for months, and finally decided it was time to get her own place, an apartment in Jersey City that she is in the middle of painting.

"It’s difficult because it’s a first step, one of many," she says. "But at the same time, it’s good, it’s positive."