Once I get through with the anniversary, it'll be better," says Bharti Parmar. There are days that aren't so tough and days that aren't so easy, she adds. Her husband Hasmukh, a computer systems manager at Cantor Fitzgerald, was, she says, "one of those Indian fathers who took so much time with their kids. He did so much with them."
That included teaching his two sons how to play the guitar. He also encouraged them to play basketball and soccer -- last year elder son Rishi made the varsity basketball team. "That was my husband's final wish," Bharti remembers, "but unfortunately he wasn't there to see it happen."
"There's no companionship now," she says. "It's very lonely. There's nobody to talk to." But she is not completely defeatist. She uses forward-looking phrases like "We'll get there, slowly," or "It's going to be a tough road," while noting, like others, that the build-up to the anniversary of 9/11 only amplifies the pain.
Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images. Text: Arun Venugopal. Excerpted from India Abroad's Magazine Special on the Survivors of 9/11