Aftermath Of Friend's Murder

Last week I received a call from someone who requested anonymity, and I'll call him Charlie.  He had seen my post of April 18, 2008 about the murder of my childhood friend Aasha Chhabra and her husband Brij in Troy, Michigan.  He wanted to update me with news about their killers so as to afford closure to the family.  (We haven't got in touch with the Thadani's young daughter, their only child, though.)

The murders had been arranged by Narayan Thadani who had betrayed Aasha's complete trust in him by selling her landed property in India and stealing the proceeds of over $2 million.  He was about to lose it all in a court case and hired two men from El Salvadore for the killings.  Narayan pleaded guilty and he as well as the two hit men all received life terms in prison in October 2010 while another accomplice got 30 years after turning state's evidence.

Charlie himself is an ex-convict who met Narayan in the Houston prison where he is now serving his sentence.  Charlie called Narayan an evil and scary person who while awaiting trial almost nonchalantly sought help from fellow inmates to hire a hit man to kill the FBI agent who was investigating his case.  Narayan apparently bore that agent a grudge and also thought the killing would remove a vital prosecution witness and help his court defense.  His fellow prisoners instead tipped off the authorities.  He was put in touch with an undercover FBI agent posing as a contract killer, and caught.

Charlie sent me the docket containing the charges for the murders of the Chhabras for which Narayan pleaded guilty, as well as for attempted murder of the FBI agent, which didn't really carry any additional downside as Narayan will spend the rest of his life behind bars anyway.

While it's good that Narayan and the three others got caught and punished, I'm still bothered by our justice system coddling perpetrators of such terrible crimes, as I opined in my September 3, 2009 post.  There is not even any lingering doubt about the guilt of all these men yet they don't get to pay the ultimate price.  The gentle and thoroughly decent Chhabras have been murdered, and their ruthless killers spend their lives in prison conditions that are better than that of much of humanity on the outside. 

Rehabilitation should of course play a role depending on the circumstances.  Charlie's own crimes were a lot less serious (why they mix prisoners whose degrees of offenses are so disparate is beyond me.)  He came across as a well spoken person who had turned his life around, and I wish him well.

The Rajat I Know

A rather sanctimonious mass email I've received is prompting this post.  Rajat Gupta, former head of McKinsey has been widely praised and admired though he is now in the news for passing material non-public information to Raj Rajaratnam (RR) of the Galleon hedge funds.

The email titled "How Much is Enough?" echoed some other chatter about how the wealthy and highly respected Rajat let greed get the better of him and ruin his reputation by abetting insider trading.

I feel compelled to balance the picture about Rajat whom we know personally since 1991 when I had just come to the US for PhD studies at the University of Chicago.  I knew nothing of McKinsey or what he did at that time, and we drove to his house simply to deliver a gift from India sent through us by one of my favorite ex-bosses in the IAS.  That was Mr. P.K. Mattoo, Chief Secretary of HP state till 1987,  and uncle of Anita Mattoo Gupta, Rajat's wife and a warm, wonderful person whom he met as a fellow student at IIT Delhi. 

I've rarely seen anyone more gracious, modest and personable than Rajat, in spite of his brilliance and success at McKinsey.  He was that way in all the subsequent times we met him, and Mr. Mattoo told me how Rajat was ever ready to sleep on the floor when he and family would visit and stay with them in India. In 1994 after Rajat became head of McKinsey, my friend Harsh from the University of Chicago who joined McKinsey told me about how he and other fresh recruits met Rajat at a welcoming party for them.  He said the recruits were blown away when Rajat came up to them individually, put out his hand and diffidently said, "Hi, I'm Rajat Gupta," before chatting with them.  "As if anyone in the gathering didn't know who he was," Harsh marveled, "And he was on the cover of many major magazines."

We saw Rajat and family after a gap of of over 10 years in June 2009 at a high school graduation party for the daughter of Sunil, Mr. P.K. Mattoo's son.  Rajat was as unassuming and cordial as ever, and introduced us to his daughter and her African American husband who had been warmly welcomed into the family.  We also learned about Rajat's hectic schedule, working for free with non-profits, including with the Gates Foundation (that he's now stepped down from) to help eradicate malaria.

While he certainly violated confidentiality as a Goldman Sachs director in his conversations with Raj Rajaratnam, he seems to have done it out of a misplaced sense of friendship, without profit to himself.  I saw SEC's most damning evidence against him, this 18 minute transcript of his call with RR.  The disclosure seems incidental to the main conversation, and as a result of RR pumping him for information.

The other striking incident cited is Rajat calling RR seconds after a Goldman board meeting where Warren Buffet's $5B investment was disclosed.  Minutes later RR placed bets on Goldman shares that netted Galleon $900,000.  To me, it's very out of character for Rajat to call someone just after receiving confidential information to tip them off for illicit gain.  Even a March 7 Times article referred to some curious aspects of the SEC's case against Rajat.

The kind of scenario I'd envision is that RR tracked scheduled board meetings and timed messages requesting a call back to Rajat accordingly.  After meetings are over the attendees typically get to their other activities, including returning calls, as Rajat did with RR.  Then in the course of other conversation that was ostensibly the purpose of RR's contact, he casually asked Rajat some leading questions about Goldman, and pounced on any resultant cues.  RR is obviously sharp as a whip, but his laid back style and humor interspersed with personal chats could disarm a friend into revealing more than he should.  Rajat's amiable and forthcoming nature could make him hesitate to clam up and pointblank refuse to answer RR's "incidental" questions.

In sum Rajat's approachability and helpfulness has apparently proved to be his undoing.  His lack of motive or ill intent seems to be why he hasn't been criminally prosecuted, though he's had to resign all his board positions and suffer ignominy. 

Sometimes bad judgment or carelessness can land very good people in trouble.  I'm sorry to see Rajat in this plight and hope he gets out of this okay.

Rubina Weds Shaun

Last month on Sunday, October 17, Rubina and Shaun were married in Middletown, CT preceded by small, intimate gatherings of the immediate family, the bridal party and some out of town guests on earlier days.  Sheena was the maid of honor and Shaun's sister Shannon was another of the bridesmaids. The wedding and celebrations which were largely planned by Shaun and Rubina went very well.  


Here was something interesting.  Our first preference for the wedding was for a Saturday, but with the Saturdays booked in the venue of our choice we had settled on a Sunday.  It turned out for the best.  After the cold and rain on Friday and a chilly Saturday, the weather improved dramatically and the sun came out to make for a great wedding day.

Rubina and Shaun in their wedding planning did an excellent job of fusing American and Indian traditions.  For example, they combined the Indian / Hindu rituals of circling a sacred fire seven times (with an explanation of its significance in English) with more typical American ceremonies and reciting of vows.  They also wisely kept focus on the primary objective of everyone attending having a good time, rather than getting the proceedings just right.  That all the ceremonies went off smoothly and well was icing on the cake.

One major difference between typical Indian weddings back home and ones in the US is in the size and composition of the guest list.  In India the invitee list is much larger and includes people who are close to the parents, even if they don't know the bridal couple too well.  But in the US as in our case those invited and attending with few exceptions were close to the couple, with the invitations going out from them rather than from the parents.  This distinction can probably help non-Americans understand why the Obama's were not invited to Chelsea Clinton's wedding.

We as Rubina's parents are happy that Rubina and Shaun are so right for each other.  Shaun is a wonderful, caring person with a warm and close knit family that Rubina (and we) immensely enjoy being around.

The couple went for a short but enjoyable honeymoon to New Orleans as they had to return to attend another wedding in Shaun's family the following week.  They're settling down well since, and plan to go on a second phase of their honeymoon trip next year.

Here are some bridal party pictures of the mehndi (henna hand painting) celebration on October 15 and the wedding on October 17.

Another Uniquely American Feature

Last month I picked up my parents returning from India at New York JFK airport. That's when I learned that the luggage cart rental has been increased there from $3 to $5. This apparently happened in February 2009 at both NYC airports.

Welcome to the US. Most fellow passengers of my parents were quite upset, and many avoided using the carts and struggled with their bags. Back in the late '80s and early '90s this charge was $1 to $1.25. I suspect Smarte Carte, the private company that operates and rents these carts, has a pretty cozy relationship with the airport authorities. This company's website as well as JFK's official one studiously omit disclosing these rates.

The parallel between these cart charges and non-universal US health care (at least as it existed till today) is obvious. It also points up the inefficiencies of this private, fee for service arrangement that makes everyone except this private company worse off. While passengers are being ripped off we also may be nearing a high cost death spiral as also explained by Krugman in a health care context. That means the exorbitant cart rates will decrease demand for them so much that the overhead costs will be spread over fewer carts, creating a push for even higher rates.

In all airports outside of the US luggage carts are "free", meaning these are included in normal airport charges that should work out to a few cents per passenger. So almost everyone uses carts and the per unit cost is a small fraction of that here. It's high time the airports (like health care authorities) learned from such better practices outside the US.

Rubina a Graphics Editor - What's That?

For the couple of years after graduating from the Columbia School of Journalism our daughter Rubina has worked as a graphics editor, the last 18 months with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

What does she do as a graphics editor? She obtains the data and material and then uses it to create charts, tables, inset summaries and other visuals (except pure photographs) that accompany news stories. For her and her colleagues it can be a charged - some will say stressful - environment with tight deadlines. But she has a passion for it.

For the most part she and her colleagues walk into work in the morning, learn about developing stories and then conceive of the graphics in consultation with reporters, columnists and editors. Then it's data and materials search, verification, creation, iterations and all to be completed before "press time" by late evening.

They each do anything from two to five graphics on a typical day, depending on the complexity and the workload. To maintain an efficient and collaborative environment without worries about who gets credit the graphics folks generally do not put their names on their creations. We don't know about her precise handiwork till she tells us, though we can make some guesses.

Want to see a sample of Rubina's work? Unfortunately, most of the online versions are not the same as the ones in print, and need a subscription to view. If you have one, here's one from May 12 that she did on the US federal highest bracket tax rates going back all the way to 1913. The print version was better. It is overlaid with the terms and pictures of US Presidents. Rubina had to work with some IRS folks to get a major part of the information. When the story came out the IRS called to compliment the WSJ on the graphic.

Addendum on July 22: Today, Rubina had a graphic on childhood obesity so I thought I'll add it. Here's what she had to say:
I have a U.S. map on today's Currents page on child obesity rates by state. Rather than color-coding the states like we usually do, we decided to make the heights of the states correspond to their obesity rates. This was done using a program called Cinema 3-D, which I used for the first time on Monday. You can see the print version on page A11 or online here by clicking on the small map: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124821547930269995.html

Gay and Diverse Celebration

Anita's young female relative graduated from high school last week, and Anita and I had a great time attending the festivities. At a private dinner in a New Haven restaurant we met a nice young couple - one the step-sister of our graduate and the other her woman spouse, along with their two year old daughter.

The cute toddler ran around, being minded and doted upon by her two moms (one the biological mother through sperm donation) as well as her grandpa, a cheerful and mild-mannered cardiologist. He and his wife introduced the female couple as their daughter and daughter-in-law.

Considering that it was a family affair with everyone related by blood or marriage, our group of 10 was remarkably diverse. Five distinct mother tongues - English, Gujerati, Hindi, Malayalam and Panjabi. A mix of four Indian ethnic groups and one Caucasian. Four different religions - Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. In answer to Rodney King's question two decades ago, yes, we can all get along beautifully.

The female couple talked of their quest, hope and anxieties about getting recognized as spouses. They first got married in San Francisco, then last month in Massachusetts and are now looking forward to legalization of same sex marriage in New York where they live. They sought marriages in multiple states because of uneven laws recognizing these, and the validity being subject to referendums and court challenges. One of them talked about the hurt she felt when her uncle (the cardiologist's brother) whom she was very close to didn't attend their wedding.

I've supported gay marriage in a "why-not-if-it-makes-people-happy" sense, brushing aside those religious objections as meaningless. But I didn't consider it very different from civil unions and was hence not too invested in the issue. Now having seen it up close and personal, I am much more sympathetic to the cause and hope it gains universal acceptance.

Prophecy Gone Wrong

My brother Viranjit, aka Kaku who is a high-tech engineer, has a surprisingly deep interest in socio-economic issues, with thoroughness to match. Seeing my last post about the Cato ad he explored "my" University of Chicago website and found two papers of interest for different reasons.

The first (and the one I'll focus on) is an authoritative paper opposing more regulation of the financial derivatives market, which includes sub-prime mortgages and CMOs. It was written about 10 years back by 1990 Nobel laureate (in Economics) Prof. Merton Miller.

He says that: a) Regulating this market further will impose an undue burden and stifle it, and drive away business from the US to overseas competitors. b) There will of course be winners and losers, but no chance of a system wide failure because of the strong and well capitalized institutions participating in this market, the tough oversight by the SEC, and the rigorous credit rating of the participants by S&P, Moody's, etc. c) The customers are mostly sophisticated institutions that need to freely use this market for hedging or risk-based investment purposes. They ought to know how the securities work and the attendant risks, and if they don't they'll learn to do so in a decade or so as the market matures. d) The valuation of these financial derivatives is typically very complex and dependent on the model being used, so it is very hard to specify disclosure requirements.

As Kaku says, "it is almost comical to see Prof. Miller's arguments so completely refuted by the causes of today's financial crisis" and wonders if "he is man enough to eat his words (which are still used as evidence by so many on the right)."

I've been taught by and interacted with Prof. Miller up close, and he was as fine, brilliant and witty a person that you could meet, with a heart to match. His paper here should not detract from his seminal work in finance that earned him the Nobel prize (including the famous Modigliani and Miller theorem of dividend irrelevance that's a staple in finance classes.) He passed away in 2000 at age 77, and so cannot retract his words.

I also think he deserves some benefit of the doubt as his stance was based on market conditions in the mid 1990's. He didn't see the explosion of sub prime mortgages and CMOs in the early 2000's that made Paul Krugman rightly and urgently call for more regulation, and for Greenspan to wrongly and disastrously oppose this. Had Miller been alive and observed the new developments, he may just for all we know have changed tack and weighed in on Krugman's side.

Here are the condensed reasons for blaming lack of regulations for letting the financial crisis occur, contrary to Miller's assessment:

a) The principal - agent problem. The "agent" here is the mortgage originator who gets paid on selling mortgages, even over-valued ones to financially unsound borrowers. Or it's the fund manager who makes large and risky bets on CMOs. If the bet pays off the fund manager gets filthy rich, and if it doesn't, it's the investor loses heavily and the fund manager pays nothing. In either case the "agent" has incentives not to act in the Principal's (investor's) interest.

b) The information asymmetry problem. The buyer or investor does not know or understand the risks involved in the funds like the originator does. This is especially true when the securities involved are highly complex and what is in them is not revealed. So the buyer is at a disadvantage unless regulations force greater transparency.

c) The time horizon mismatch. This can cause agents like fund managers with near term outlook to take risks or pump up short term performance that is not sustainable. The consequences eventually catch up with the investors, but by then the agent (hopes that he) has left.

d) Cozy regulator and rating agency relationships with their target entities. The S&P and Moody's are hired and paid by the very firms whose credit they rate - an inherent conflict of interest. Miller lauds "the two way nature of the flow of top regulators and top executives" within the industry, but this can be a curse instead of a virtue, as such connections weakens oversight.

e) Systemic shocks. Everyone is happy and buoyed up by bubbles in stocks or the rising tide of real estate prices. But a reversal of this trend causes a downward spiral that (absent of safeguards) sinks a lot of boats.

f) Letting the ignorant and the stupid self-destruct. This is a harder sell, but we may need laws to protect the ignorant from their own bad decisions, just as we have laws to compel use of seat belts while driving, or those banning the use of heroin or crack.

Moreover, special interests and right-wingers have bastardized the term "free markets." It should mean freely traded goods and services in a competitive setting without the burden of distorting taxes, duties or undue restrictions. What it shouldn't mean is lack of checks on deception, the selling of spurious products, withholding information about what's being sold, or failure to mandate safety standards. Regulations compelling transparency in where money is being invested and in the detailed disclosure of returns, and better scrutiny enhances free markets, not detract from them. It may also prevent the havoc wreaked by future Bernie Madoffs, or ill-conceived CMOs.

The other U. of C. paper that Kaku looked up is titled "Are CEOs Rewarded for Luck? The Ones Without Principals Are." Note the spelling of "Principals" as they're referring to main investors, not ethics. This topic needs a separate discussion, and this academic paper is (as typical) fairly long and involved. You can see the conclusions at p. 23 - 24: essentially that a major chunk of the CEO salary depends on luck (the fortunes of that industry rather than individual performance) and the problem is worse for poorly governed firms. It undercuts some big arguments for large US-style CEO compensation.

The findings aren't surprising. For instance, compare the salaries in past years of the CEOs of the Big Three US automakers with their Japanese (Toyota, Honda, etc.) counterparts who make a fraction of that. Look at the fortunes of these respective companies now. Still, there are defenders of the US (and detractors of the Japanese) system: see for example this Feb. 23 BusinessWeek article titled "Japan: No Model For Executive Compensation." I am underwhelmed by the logic and the case sought to be made out here, though.

Mumbai Pre-Wedding Celebration Pics

Anita and I returned from Delhi to Pune on Jan 4, and Sheena joined us there a day later. Over the next three days all was fine and stable at my in-laws and we then headed to Mumbai to attend the wedding festivities spread over 3 - 4 days of our (Anita's) niece Ira.

Anita and I stayed in Mumbai with her cousin Ashok and were (as usual) very well looked after, while Sheena stayed in the suite in NSCI Club that was reserved for Ira, the bride. There were lots of fun events and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was also a great opportunity to hang out and reconnect with Anita's extended family and friends.

We (mainly Sheena) took many pictures. I'm adding the link here to the ones taken Jan 8 - 10 in the lead up to the actual wedding day of Jan 11 that will be posted separately. There are 200+ pictures of which a handful have been labeled.

Our Delhi And Shimla Trips

While Rubina couldn't get vacation and accompany us to India on our recent trip, I'm glad that Sheena could do so. Here I'm touching on the Delhi and Shimla legs of our trip with some pictures in the Dec. 28 - 31, '08 period. I seldom think of taking the camera along and using it, and most pics here are thanks to Sheena. A lot of my relatives and close friends are in Delhi, as are close friends and former IAS etc., colleagues in Shimla. Another city we generally visit in north India is Chandigarh, but there wasn't enough time on this trip.

In the late afternoon of Dec. 28th when we flew into Delhi from Pune, I called up my fast friends and IAS batchmates, Rajan Katoch and Jitesh Khosla. True to form they were game to meet over dinner despite the lack of prior notice. Jitesh hosted it in the Delhi 'O' Delhi restaurant of The Habitat Center. It was a fun meeting and great catching up.

The first three pictures in this link are of all of us (Jitesh and wife Rashi, Rajan and wife Kirti, Anita and I, and one includes Sheena who took the other two) after the meal. The remaining five feature Laboni the following morning, the first two with her dad Dharmi, then one by herself and the last two with Sheena. She's amazingly bright and does parents Dharmi and Bidisha proud.

Then Anita, Sheena and I drove up to Shimla. Indu and Yogesh Khanna (IAS '73, retd., now the regulator for the HP Electricity Board) had graciously insisted that we stay with them in Shimla and we spent two very comfortable and enjoyable days with them. On December 30th we visited our still unfinished house in Shimla. Then Anita and Sheena spent the afternoon with Anita's long time friend and former St. Bede's College faculty colleague Anuja Sharma in Theog, and then went shopping in Shimla. I visited friends and former colleagues in the HP Secretariat.

In the evening we headed to a dinner hosted by Yogesh and Indu and attended by old friends who were braving the Shimla winter. (Over half the people we know typically leave for the milder weather of Delhi or other plains.) Again much fun and laughter. In these pictures from our Shimla trip I missed many folks. Among them Anju and Daljit Minhas (our good friend from the IPS) had left our dinner gathering early before we started clicking.

We returned to Delhi late on New Year's eve and hurried to a party in the home of Anu and Ravi Sachdev. Ravi is a good college friend whom Anita and I hadn't met since 1984, and it was even longer since I'd met inveterate world traveler Rahul Sud, another college comrade who was also there. So it was a great reunion. Ravi's son and his daughter-in-law whisked Sheena off to a farm bash attended by about a 150 people and they enjoyed partying past 5 am. Quite remarkable considering that Sheena left for a visit to Sri Lanka that same day.

For Anita and I the remaining two days in Delhi flew by, and included a dinner at the Gymkhana Club with my parents and friends besides smaller gatherings before we returned to Pune on Jan. 4. On our last morning we finally visited the impressive Akshardham Temple in Delhi, currently the largest Hindu Temple in the world. I wish our stay in North India could've been longer but I'm thankful that we can regularly make it there.

Relatives Help and Visit Pune

In Anita's extended family (as may be typical in large ones) interactions range from little or no contact with some relatives for decades, to having very close bonds. We're fortunate to find many in the latter category.

But people lead busy lives and we don't expect them to disrupt these on our account. This is especially so when we're not seeking any help, and assuring relatives that any situation we're facing is firmly under control.

So on our recent trip to Pune we were overwhelmed by the outpouring of warmth, support and help from Anita's folks, who're mostly my good friends too.

When I first arrived to tend to my in-laws' medical emergency I only sought advice and contact information from the three Pune-based uncles and aunts about good hospitals and doctors. That was enough for me to move Daddy and Mummy to the hospital, lock up their apartment and get their treatment under way. Most of Anita's relatives live in Mumbai, and I emphatically told them I needed nothing else and that they shouldn't bother coming to Pune.

But they'd have none of it. Now I know from where Anita gets her stubborn streak (and those other qualities that made me woo her decades ago.) When we come to India we typically stay a few days in Mumbai to meet up and spend time with relatives living there. This time we stayed put in Pune, yet a lot of Mumbaiites that we care about come to us in Pune.

In the process, the visits were a big morale booster for Daddy and Mummy, and our doctors said that these probably significantly helped their recovery. And there was more.

Here are some highlights:

• Anita's cousins Ashok, Gul, Indru, Jagdish, Kavita, Meena (with daughter Tanny) and Rita specially made the 8 -10 hour round trip from Mumbai to Pune just to look up my in-laws and spend time with us


• Aunt Duru and Uncle Hira cancelled / put off all their travel and holiday plans despite our protestations, to help, regularly visit and advise us in Pune till my in-laws were home


• Again, despite my dissuasion Rita with maid in tow left her husband Dilip (who is miserable without her and vice versa) for six days to join me in Pune to tend to Daddy and Mummy in hospital. As it turned out her help was invaluable because I wasn't expecting to be so heavily occupied with Daddy's emergency surgery. Rita's company and consultations apart, I was also able to leave Mummy to her care in this time before Anita had joined me


• Dilip himself made repeated calls to get me to agree to his visiting Pune and taking me back in his car to Mumbai for the flight back to USA. I instead asked him to postpone his trip so he could look up Daddy and Mummy some time after I and Prakash had gone. Dilip agreed and his trip on Nov. 17 - 18 provides valuable coverage, as did Kavita's second trip on Nov. 8th. This way there's always someone dropping in and checking on Daddy and Mummy as they're steadily getting better


• Ashok lent a vital cell phone and datacard for internet connectivity on our laptops from anywhere. India's anti-terrorism measures include dumb provisions that make it very difficult for those of us visiting from abroad to obtain cell phones and data cards in our own names. So Ashok's help proved very useful


• Ashok (and owners Gul and Indru) repeatedly offered all the resources at the 5 star Sun-n-Sand Hotel in Pune which is a short walk from Inlaks. When Anita landed in Mumbai, she was brought to Pune by Ashok and Indru. Then we were ensconced in the penthouse suite of Sun-n-Sand for the next two weeks with the full run of all facilities. It was like living in two worlds, transitioning daily from the hubbub and frenetic activity of the hospital to the lavish luxury of the hotel. There were 300 exotic dishes to try in the hotel's multiple restaurants, a nice gym to work off (half) the calories we took in, and a retinue of smiling staff to attend to our needs
  
• Moti Uncle and his wife Mooma lived in Pune for decades till recently, called regularly to enquire about Daddy and Mummy, and give valuable advice. They also had a good 50th wedding anniversary bash in Mumbai on the same evening that I was arriving from Pune to catch my flight back to USA. I went with Meena and Tanny to the party and spent a wonderful 45 minutes meeting and revelling with the assembled clan before leaving for the airport

So despite the serious purpose of our visit and some hectic activity, Anita and I had a memorable trip interspersed with these warm get-togethers, and helpful relatives. (For poor Prakash, Anita's brother and the dutiful son who relieved me in Pune, it was just a lot more of work, which he cheerfully did without having time to meet many people.)

When marrying Anita, I hadn't realized I'd gain such a nice extended family of hers as dowry.

Close Indian Neighbors

For those living in the US who are used to cordial but occasional contact with neighbors, the experience in India can be quite revealing.

My in-laws (Daddy and Mummy) live in a closed apartment community in Pune, India which is called a (housing) "society". I have been struck by the warm and close interactions with neighbors in their society. This became even more evident recently.

A couple of times Mummy tried to walk and fell in the small hours of the morning, and Daddy wasn't able to get her back up. Their neighbors not only rushed to their help in those times but also rallied to monitor and care for them for several days subsequently.

I (and subsequently Anita) arrived from the US and had both my in-laws hospitalized. In the next several weeks they overcame a number of conditions on the road to recovery. In this time as well the close involvement of neighbors was striking. Some examples:

• Some neighbors visited Daddy and Mummy in the rather distant hospital. Many more were intending to do so but heeded my request about no visitors so we could concentrate on their treatment


• Immediate neighbors took charge, discontinued part-time help and stopped delivery of supplies, newspapers, etc., to my in-law's apartment during their hospital stay. I hadn't anticipated any of this in the midst of the medical emergency


• After their return home, Daddy and Mummy had streams of visiting neighbors to welcome them back. Many brought along children or grandchildren to help cheer them up. I was impressed seeing these kids under 10 years of age patiently and respectfully spending time with my in-laws when they could be doing more fun things elsewhere


• Many came forward with local information and advice that was helpful to us in making arrangements and settling my in-laws back down


• This Mira Society has over a thousand residents, yet a third of them seemed to know about our predicament, and who I was. I'd cross and greet apparent strangers walking in the internal streets here and they'd stop me to ask about my in-laws, and how long I planned to remain in Pune

Life in Mira Society is of course not typical of that in other places. In Delhi and Mumbai we see neighbor interactions that more closely mirror those in the urban US.

My in-laws have stayed in Mira Society for over 30 years, and I can understand their reluctance to move to a service apartment as we have urged, that is more suited to elderly care.

The other remarkable thing is the way Anita's extended family came together to our help. I'll describe some of that in the next post.

Bad Things Happen To The Best People

Last month my father-in-law ("Daddy") informed us about the murder of Asha (aka Aasha) and her husband Brij Chhabra in Troy, Michigan. Asha was the only child of Daddy's best friend and cousin, S.K. Mirchandani who had passed away a few years ago. She had inherited a sizeable estate in India worth over $2 million.

Now in the US with her family, Asha let a close family friend still maintaining Indian connections manage the property for her. This person whom she trusted completely was Narayan Thadani, who now lived in Texas. Well, Thadani secretly sold off her estate and stole all the proceeds. When he was exposed and on the verge of losing a lawsuit in Texas, he hired two El Salvadoreans to kill Asha and her husband. As this news story reports, by sheer chance the two were caught following a routine traffic stop after they drove away from the crime scene.

Their deaths were horrible news to us, though Anita recalled little if anything about Asha and I hadn't met her or her husband. Or so I thought. But Daddy said my own parents knew the family of Mr. S.K. Mirchandani well. When I called with the news my parents said that I too had known Asha well from way back. I was surprised.

They told me Asha's dad Mr. S.K. Mirchandani was my dad's boss for about two years when he first joined the Indian government long before I was born. Mr. Mirchandani was one of the finest and upright of people so my Dad was devoted to him, and remained friends long after their official association ended. My parents said we'd visit the Mirchandanis often in Delhi, and I loved playing with Asha.

Then it hit me who Asha really was. She was the first person that I had asked to be my best friend (she accepted) when I was five and she was eight years old. She was bubbly and caring and fun. My favorite play then was simply to run and she'd laughingly run alongside. Or we'd play tag on her lawn. I'd eagerly look forward to going to her house. I was too young to have been a true playmate for her, but she indulged me with gusto and kept me so happy and excited that I'd hate to leave.

I last saw her when I was eight, after quite a gap because of my parents' preoccupation with other family matters. I was excited to see her again and noticed how much she'd changed. She must have hit a growth spurt because she was now a few inches taller than I. She had become graceful and lady-like and with her large eyes and now shoulder-length hair looked to me like an angel. While we didn't play physical games like before, she showed me interesting things in her room and responded to my chatter. I remember how she laughed at my fascination with flashlights and produced one for us to play with.

Till now I was unaware that I had ended up marrying her second cousin. Her family (maiden) name Mirchandani hadn't registered in my young mind when I knew her or I'd have made the connection much earlier. Now she and her husband are tragically gone, and I've heard they were every bit as nice as what I recalled about her. This other news item other details of the killing and its immediate aftermath. There are also pictures of them and their killer(s) on the internet - just search Google images. My heart goes out to their young daughter Suman that they left behind.

I'd like their cold-bloodied killers (including the family friend who ordered the hit) to be punished under the fullest extent of the law. But this won't bring Asha and her husband back.