Swarna Chalasani: Peripatetic
Adventurer
When
Swarna Chalasani traveled &emdash; and she traveled a lot
&emdash; it was never simply a vacation. It was an
adventure.
She rode white-water rapids in Colorado. She
backpacked through Thailand. She taught herself Japanese
and Spanish to prepare for her trips abroad. She read
voluminously about her destinations weeks before she
left.
Ms. Chalasani was a vice president at Fiduciary Trust
and was last seen on the 94th floor of 2 World Trade
Center on the day of the attack. She would have
celebrated her 34th birthday today.
Her first name means "gold" in Hindi, though her
family called her Minny. "She was the smallest of the
three girls, and the cutest," her sister, Sandhya,
said.
If she had a taste for the exotic, she also had a
knack for making her home into a comfortable palace.
There were beautiful paintings and shelves full of books.
There were plants and scented candles. "She treated these
things likes sacred objects," her mother, Lakshmi,
said.
The lost echoes of her full-throated laughter. The
memory of her smile across the dinner table. Her
postcards mailed from distant countries. This is all that
remains of Ms. Chalasani.
Her family guards them like the sacred objects they
have now become.
.
