When Nancy Yambem received her husband Jupiter's ashes -- the body was discovered four days after the attack on Tower One -- she divided them up into three portions. The first would stay at her home in Beacon, New York. The second was couriered to her brother-in-law in Manipur, where they were scattered over Lake Loktak. She held onto the third portion until she went to India with her son Santi last year. They visited Darjeeling, where Jupiter went to school, and from there, standing high up on Tiger Hill, she tossed his ashes out over the valley.
Santi is now seven -- old enough to remember his father but too young to recall details -- so Nancy has made it a point to remind him. "We continue to keep Jupiter in our conversations. I say things like 'Your Papa would have loved to have been here.'"
Every night, before turning in, they recall a habit Jupiter had of blowing them kisses whenever she and Santi were driving off from the house. "We blow a kiss and say 'We love you, Papa, and we always will,'" she said.
Photograph: Courtesy Nancy Yambem. Text: Arun Venugopal. Excerpted from India Abroad's Magazine Special on the Survivors of 9/11