Girl’s last words to dad: I just finished my dinner

VIZIANAGARAM: ‘Daddy I have finished my dinner just now. Good night,” were the last words that university gold medalist K Vani Manasa said to her father on Friday night as she headed for Shirdi with her batchmates from Maharaja Vijayaram Gajapathi Raj College of Engineering (MVGR) and colleagues from Tata Consultancy Services in what was the last journey of her short life.
The news of this twenty-something budding techie’s involvement in the tragic accident reached her doting father on Saturday morning just as he was headed for work. Vani Manasa was a brilliant student and youngest of the two daughters of K Ramulu, headmaster of ZPHS School at Sivaramapuram in Kurupam mandal of Vizianagarm. Her elder sister is happily married and settled in Canada. Vani bagged the gold medal of Andhra University in computer science and was among the 162 students inducted into TCS during campus interviews. She joined TCS on March 12 this year.
As fate would have it, Vani was not too keen to go on the pilgrimage to Shirdi, but finally decided to join in due to pressure from colleagues. Of the 16 TCS techies, three luckier ones decided to cancel their trip at the last minute.Vani’s inconsolable father said that they were very happy that his daughter had joined a reputed company and was confident that she would have a bright future. But that was not to be as fate dashed the dreams of Vani and her parents, leaving them high and dry.
The ill-fated bus trip also snuffed out the lives of twin sisters – P Divya and P Deepthi from Visakhapatnam. While P Divya was Vani’s batchmate at MVGR College and colleague at TCS, her twin sister P Deepthi was pursuing her Masters in Science from Vizag. The twins’ father P Jagannadha Rao runs a drug store `Shree Rama Medicals’ at Dabagardens area of Visakhapatnam.