Two years later, not much has changed for Arjan and Indra Mirpuri. They still imagine their only child Rajesh getting ready before going to work downtown as a risk management consultant. The residents of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, remember their son, who died in the World Trade Center, as "a good boy."
"He used to care about us," they say, surveying Rajesh's room which is filled with memorabilia from his suburban childhood to his later years: stuffed animals, a baseball trophy, INXS CDs as well as John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
After 9/11, Arjan and Indra turned to their guru Dada J P Vaswani for answers. "He said he's very happy about my son," says Arjan, but no explanation was given, or sought. "You don't ask why. You just follow. These are the teachings of our gurus."
"When you ask 'Why, God?' you don't get any reply for that... But after talking to our guru you feel a little comfortable. Because we're on this path we had a little courage to face this difficult situation."
Photograph: Paresh Gandhi. Text: Arun Venugopal. Excerpted from India Abroad's Magazine Special on the Survivors of 9/11