The 48th death. [Text by Chiki Sarkar; photo by Siddharth Dhanwant Sanghvi] Chiki Sarkar was run over by a car earlier this morning. Her family and friends had always worried about her cavalier attitude towards crossing roads and their fears proved tragically right. It was an untimely death. Ms Sarkar, 37, publisher of Penguin Random House India, had just got married and was full of love and life making constant plans for redoing her flat, having babies and buying the next big hit. Moving back to India, nearly a decade ago, she made her mark at work publishing brilliant new talent such as Pulitzer finalist Daniyal Mueenuddin and commercial hits like the diet book Don’t Lose your Mind, Lose your

The 47th death. [By Vasantha Angamuthu] Writer, cookbook hoarder and mother of the talented Nina Singh, Vasantha Angamuthu (6 April 1968 – 6 April 2068) died in her sleep last night, much earlier than she would have liked but much later than she had expected given her well publicized love for cigarettes, Bordeaux-style red wine and handmade gin. Ms Angamuthu worked as a journalist and editor in South Africa, India and, briefly, in New York, a city she loved because there were more restaurants than “one could conceivably eat at even if you ate every meal out for your entire life”. She wrote a blog documenting her valiant attempts to do just that. She was known for extolling the virtues of just lying around,

The 46th death. [Text by Sanjiv Saraf; photo by The Rekhta Team] Sanjiv Saraf, businessman and Urdu poetry lover, died yesterday. When he was just 26 years old, Mr Saraf, an engineer from IIT Kharagpur, left a cushy position in his family’s successful business and struck out on his own. He started a small venture in 1988 that nearly went bankrupt within three years. Persevering, he clawed his way back to build Polyplex, a successful multinational business in plastics. An entrepreneur at heart, Mr Saraf hated the humdrum of day-to-day management. He jokingly called himself “the ultimate delegator”, doing what he enjoyed most, i.e., creating. Apart from factories in India, Thailand, Turkey and the U.S., he also set up a number of eco-friendly hydroelectric

The 45th death. [Text by Heena Khan; photo by Ziya Khan] Deeply religious, she lived her life behind a veil of illusions. However, sometimes, just sometimes, Heena Khan would wear her modesty quite literary, too, as a hijab. It was her private way to hide her innermost thoughts from the world's prying eyes. “Heena was worldly-unwise,” says her friend Payal who knew the author from their days at the J-school. A writer, Ms Khan was forever haunted by words - her words that were locked up inside her, and which she shared with the world only after disguising them as fiction. Her prose and poetry hinted of gentle sadness. Picky as she was, she chose to pass away in her sleep. The

The 44th death. [Text by Binduu Chopra; photo by Aryan Adityo] Binduu was a dot. She was also a drop of water; also a full circle. Actually, she just wished to be a drop of love. Eldest of the three children of Saroj and Rajinder, Ms Chopra loved candles, plants, shells, chunky silver rings, wind chimes, and nail paints. An author of three books and a few anthologies, she kept herself busy with her writings, her "heart beats". Ms Chopra dreamed of a life in a slow paced town where she would sit among the thick trees and gaze at the stars at night -- but she was too scared of the dark, too fearful of the sounds of leaves

The 43rd death. [Text by Lesley Esteves; photo by Shuddhabrata Sengupta] Lesley Esteves, who passed away at 82 from complications of type 2 diabetes, grew up in Mumbai and later settled permanently in Goa, but spent the prime years of his adult life in the capital, from ages 23 to 45. Much of the Delhi years were spent proclaiming to the world as loudly as possible, his lesbian sexuality and genderqueer identity, for more than anything, Esteves craved the oblivion of the ordinary. The ordinary ability to walk down the streets of Shahjahanabad unremarked upon; the bland freedom of being frisked at IGI airport without ever having his chest felt up; to hold a girl’s hand in Central Park, Connaught Place, with no

The 42nd death. [Text by Padmini Vaidyanathan; photo by Nameless Memory] All she wanted was an epitaph that read ‘Love’. That is how Padmini Vaidyanathan defined her crazy life and her penchant for everything crazy. If she knew it was her last day, she would have spent it apologizing to a lot of people - for being late, for being too early, for being a brat, for being difficult and sometimes for just being. When Ms Vaidyanathan was younger, she believed she didn't fit in. Towards the later part of her existence, she discovered (or rather started believing) that nobody did. So she chose to spend it wisely by actively campaigning against assholes everywhere - "You needn't fit, you needn't be an

The 41st death. [Text by Sadia Dehlvi; photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] There was an unmistakable scent of roses in the room. That night she dreamed of a luminous being telling her she would soon journey to the other world. On the destined night, Sadia Dehlvi hosted a Qawwali mehfil and dinner for family and friends, bidding them farewell in her heart. Just before the morning call to prayer, while she lay on the bed holding her son Arman’s hand, singing 'Main to Nijam se naina milaaaeerey', her soul flew away. Ms Dehlvi rests in the khanqah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Her friends insist that on Thursday evenings they see her light a candle in the dargah’s courtyard; but, they say, she