Remembering Sunando

Sunando Sen probably did not realise what happened to him. One moment he was standing close to the edge of the platform looking at the oncoming subway. And the next moment a crazy woman, who carried hatred towards Hindus and Muslims since September 11, 2001, pushed him on the tracks. His death was gruesome, but hopefully it was quick. I would like to believe that he didn’t suffer too much. At 46, he was too young to die.

A friend called him “an Indian Gregory Peck”. He was supposedly working on a Ph.D. program at New York University and he had recently opened his own printing and photocopying business near Columbia University. In his 20 years in the US, he had tried to live the American dream and he was just beginning to realise it. Sen’s tragic death affected me deeply and not just because he was an Indian immigrant, living his life in New York.

He died at the 40th Street/ Lowery Street subway station in Sunnyside, Queens — six blocks from where I live. Sen died at the same spot where four years ago, 29 yearold Rajiv Reddy Malladi, an immigrant from Hyderabad, committed suicide by jumping on the train tracks.

For me that is way too many brown desis who have died one subway stop away from mine, too close to where I live. I can brush aside the two deaths as a mere coincidence, but I cannot forget such tragedies despite my otherwise busy life. Sen used to live in Sunnyside with a friend, before he moved into another apartment in Elmhurst.

I now look at his picture, wondering whether I had seen him, if we had travelled together in the same subway car on the number 7 train on our way to Manhattan back home in the evening. Sen was the second person to die on a subway track in December in New York City. The first was a Korean immigrant who was pushed on the track by another crazy person.

I do not want their deaths to become mere statistics. Last month, a television channel in New York interviewed the young daughter of the Korean man. Her one regret was that she could not say a final goodbye to her father or tell him that she loved him. According to newspaper reports, Sen did not have any family in the US. His funeral was attended by friends and acquaintances. I wish I had attended his funeral, but I was out of the country.

Too often we focus on the rich and the famous desi immigrants in the US — the successes of M Night Shyamalan and Jhumpa Lahiri, and the rise and the fall of Anand Jon and Rajat Gupta.

But very rarely do we think of other immigrants who often figure in our lives, touching us and making our day go smoother. I mourn Sen’s death, since he seems like a member of the extended family I have in Sunnyside, Queens. There is a Burmese man who runs a dry cleaning and laundromat establishment across from my building. He works long hours, seven days a week, and rarely takes time off.

He washes my clothes and always welcomes me, calling out my name with a slight lisp. Then there is a Bangladeshi woman who works the early morning shift at Dunkin Donuts at the corner of my apartment building.

Each time she sees me, she asks in her lovely Bengali accent “Sir, how are you this morning?” And then she rattles off my order — it has been the same for many years — “Small coffee, milk, no sugar!”

I read a piece on Huffington Post that Sen was an equally warm and caring immigrant. He had helped the writer of the piece restore old pictures of his parents.

The author wrote: “Sunando Sen was a real person. I knew him the way a lot of New Yorkers know each other. We passed through each others’ lives.” It is a touching tribute to a decent human being. Sen did not lead a glamourous life, but he deserves this eulogy and to be remembered.