A friend remembers Pushkin Chandra

A murder, as reported in the newsmedia, lends a dark hue to everything and everyone involved. It''s never like anAgatha Christie or Ruth Rendell novel, where the characters and theircircumstances are clearly etched out, where the reader can try and understandthe genesis of the tragedy. News reports often do just theopposite.Whether it''s a suicide or murder, the players are paintedin such strange colours that they become unreal. They become burlesque images ofhow we think those involved in such sordid affairs should be. The reports seemto say: Look, these were really weird people, not like you and me. That''s howthis bad thing happened to them. It''ll never happen to us.This isthe case with the double murder of Pushkin Chandra and Kuldeep Singh in Delhi.The two victims have been turned into caricatures of the gay Delhi-ite, with adecadent lifestyle that''s totally removed from anything we can imagine forourselves. But who were Pushkin Chandra and Kuldeep Singh, really?Iknew Pushkin before he left to do his MBA in the USA and we resumed ourfriendship when he returned to Delhi and joined the consulting firm of KSATechnopak as their supply chain management expert. He wasn''t a gay activist buthe was totally comfortable with his sexuality. And there was nothing flamboyantabout Pushkin -- he looked every bit the corporate executive he actuallywas.