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Ink Fresh On Their Passport, Only News Comes Back Home

Parents in Andhra Pradesh grieve the death of their children killed under mysterious circumstances in the US

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Ink Fresh On Their Passport, Only News Comes Back Home
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Allam Kiran Kumar, centre, with his parents Shobha and Rajaiah, left, at the airport before he left for Louisiana State University

Kiran, who had almost completed his PhD in chemistry, had planned to repay the loan that Rajaiah—only a clerk when he sent his son abroad—took to help him realise his ambitions; he had also planned to move his parents to a bigger and better house. Today, as they try to come to terms with Kiran's death, and the death of all those happy plans, they also have to pay off the Rs 8.5 lakh they owe the bank. "We wouldn't advise anyone to go America," says Shobha, whose two daughters, also in the US, want to come back home.

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Sriniwas with his parents while they were visiting him in '02. Their doctor son had plans to set up a hospital at home.

Over the past year, there have been several reminders for the family of their own ordeal, as bodies have come home of bright young Indians who were studying or working in the US, most of them, it turns out, from Andhra Pradesh. Kiran's friend, Chandrashekhar Reddy, was shot dead with him. In March, Akkaldelvi Srinivas, a postgraduate student from Karimnagar district in the Telangana region, famous for its high concentration of American-dream chasers, was brutally murdered by unknown assailants. In September, Soumya Reddy Tummala and her cousin Vikram Kumar Tummala were found dead in mysterious circumstances.

This month, it was software engineer Arpana Jinaga's face, forehead smeared with vibhuti and vermilion, that flashed across news bulletins. Family members struggled to illuminate, for strangers, a 24-year-old life snuffed out with careless brutality. "She was a perfect blend of adventure, philanthropy and knowledge," her uncle V.C. Jinaga told Outlook. "She wrote poetry, she joined the local fire protection group...," he said. And, shortly after Aparna's cremation came the news that Shashank Pulluru, another Andhraite, had been shot at near a university campus in Tennessee.

Statistically speaking, these deaths are insignificant, when set against the exodus of thousands of US-bound degree- and job-seekers from the state every year (seeDearDeparted). But they have set off currents of disquiet in a society so heavily invested in the idea of "making it" in the US that it even has a Visa God—the presiding deity of the Chilkur Balaji temple near Hyderabad, which draws thousands of visa-seeking visitors every week, especially during the December-January peak 'application season'.

For families, grieving a death of this kind is a complex process, says Sanjeev Jain, professor of psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore. "Grief is heightened when it is associated with feelings of ambivalence. And in an Indian context, sending your child thousands of miles away is an ambivalent decision. There is a conscious weighing of pros and cons, of material success and other considerations. And when the whole thing turns out badly, you begin to question the very premise on which the decision is made." Jain also points out that the distant deaths, in a society where the victims are largely anonymous, "as anonymous as the rural migrant who dies on a Bangalore construction site", heightens the family's sense of helplessness and bewilderment—and anger at the "unfairness of it all".

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Software engineer Aparna Jinaga's body arrives in Hyderabad. The 24-year-old was found murdered in her apartment.

Anger at the anonymity of the deaths came through clearly in the missive that the Telugu Association of North America (TANA) shot off recently to India's ambassador in Washington, Ronen Sen: "What bothers us most is that the incidents are forgotten as soon as they are reported. There does not seem to be a proper closure for the families, either of finding out what actually happened or of seeing the criminals brought to justice and punished."

Indeed, some parents, like Akkaldelvi Anjaiah of Korutla, a town in Karimnagar district, only have the haziest idea of how their children were taken away from them. Unlike Rajaiah, who tracks the investigation of his son's death through relatives, and knows his alleged killers are being tried, all Anjaiah knows is that the murder of his son Srinivas (by unknown assailants in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in March) was a "mystery death". "I don't know what happened to him," he says dully.

The 64-year-old garage-owner and his wife Laxmi, 68, live on bitter-sweet memories like their first, and only, trip to the US in '02, captured in happy, misty pictures of their visit with their son to the Niagara Falls. Anjaiah carries on with his everyday routine at the garage, but the building itself is a daily reminder of what might have been. His doctor son had dreams of turning the garage into a small hospital when he came back to India. Echoing Shobha, he now says the dreams of bright youngsters should be pursued in India, not abroad: "There is a lot of opportunity here, they should try and make the best of it."

While there is little chance of Anjaiah's advice shaking a deeply ingrained belief that nirvana lies in America, Andhraites at home and pan-Indian associations in the US are not complacent about the death of his son and others like him. On the contrary, they are anxious to trace patterns and draw lessons—not easy when the deaths in question are random, unconnected acts of violence.

However, one lesson that seems to have been drawn, across the board, is the need to arm young people, especially those who leave small towns in India for foreign shores, with the street skills to survive in an alien environment. Says D. Anoop Kumar of Visu International, a Hyderabad-based educational consultancy: "It is not enough to prep kids for the visa interview. They need to be taught culturally appropriate behaviour, how to travel safely, how to vet roommates, and how to use politically correct language. And the onus is on us—training institutes, parents, extended family."

A.K.B. Prasad, chairman of Andhra Pradesh Official Language Commission, whose 25-year-old grandson was shot dead while working at a gas station in the US in '04, agrees. "Moving from a conservative to a liberal society causes adjustment problems, youngsters need to be prepared." In the US, Jayaram Komati of TANA told Outlook his group is now urging Indian Americans to reach out for help in times of need. "We have a responsibility to support each other," he said, pointing out that veterans like him can advise Indian students arriving in America against taking up high-risk jobs like late night shifts at gas stations. Indian student associations on campuses across the US are echoing his remarks, and words of advice are popping up on student websites everywhere: hang out with trusted people at night, follow safety rules, don't flash gold jewellery or ipods. But for Shobha and Rajaiah, and for Anjaiah and Laxmi, it is all too late. Their American dream is over.

With Ashish Kumar Sen in Washington and Nitya Rao in Delhi

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