This story is from February 25, 2017

Widow of slain Indian engineer: I urged return to India but husband had faith in the US

In a choked voice, Sunayana described how they came to the US around the same time about a decade ago, met online, and married in 2012 after a six-year courtship despite living in different cities and going to separate universities.
Widow of slain Indian engineer: I urged return to India but husband had faith in the US
Key Highlights
  • Sunayana Dumala said she used to wonder about returning to India.
  • She said but her husband urged her to be positive.
  • Sunayana said: "We need to ask: Do we belong here?"
  • She demanded answers from the US government about the issue of hate crimes.
WASHINGTON: The widow of the Indian engineer killed in a Kansas bar by a white extremist said she often wondered about returning to India because of her perception of growing intolerance in the US, but her husband urged her to be positive, saying "good things happen to good people."
"We've read many times in newspapers of some kind of shooting happening," Sunayana Dumala, whose husband Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot to death earlier this week by a crazed xenophobe, said at a news conference at the headquarters of Garmin, where the Hyderabad-raised Kuchibhotla worked as an aviation systems engineer.
"And we always wondered, how safe are we?"
In a choked voice that left hardly a dry eye among the 200 Garmin workers who gathered to pay tribute to her much-loved husband and support his co-worker Alok Reddy Madasani, who survived the shooting, Sunayana described how they came to the US around the same time about a decade ago, met online, and married in 2012 after a six-year courtship despite living in different cities and going to separate universities.
They moved soon after to Olathe, Kansas, when Kuchibhotla got a job with Garmin, and bought a dream house in a new sub-division. She said they were planning on having children when he was murdered, a few days short of his 33rd birthday.
Oftentimes, Sunayana said, they had discussed going back to India or moving to another country many times, but her husband always rejected the idea, confident that everything would be fine.
Echoing the doubts in the minds of many immigrants and professional guest workers from India, the young window plaintively asked, "I have a question in my mind: Do we belong here? " as she spoke candidly of weighing whether to continue living in the US to honor her husband's life.

It was his confidence in her to be "successful in any field I choose," which led her to find a job four years ago in a pharmaceutical marketing agency, she said.
But before she made any decision during the time she goes to India for her husband's last rites, she wanted to know what the US government was going to do to address the issue of hate crimes.
"I need an answer, I need an answer from the government. I need an answer for everyone out there," she said. "Not just for my husband ... but for everyone, all those people of any race."
But as of Saturday morning, there was little by way of commiseration from the Trump administration , with the ruling dispensation seemingly intent on appealing to its hardline nationalist white base that gathered in the capital for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where fiery, red-blooded speeches celebrating nationalism and protectionism have been the order of the day.
The White House said any loss of life is tragic, but stopped short of entertaining notions that it was a hate crime, while maintaining it would be it would be absurd to link the shooting to President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric.
"To right now intimate what the motives are, it's too early to jump to a conclusion," Presidential spokesman Sean Spicer said. "We've seen that too often in the past in Florida and other places where people jump to a conclusion."
But race relations experts and civil liberties activists pointed out that the President never seemed to have time to tweet about violence against immigrants and minorities.
"@realDonaldTrump still waiting for your comment on the tragic Kansas shooting. Too busy ranting about @CNN and @nytimes?" taunted one tweet tagged to the President, as he continued his tirade against the liberal US media, which was up in arms on Friday after being blocked from a White House background briefing.
Meanwhile, India's tech brigade in the US remained in mourning, and in turmoil, over the murder of a co-worker whose career path is similar to the one taken by more than a million skilled professionals, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella.


Indian-American lawmakers too pitched in to express their grief and dismay at the crime and what it meant for their idea of America.
"Along with so many throughout the world, I have always believed in the American Dream of our country as a place where regardless of where you come from, the color of your skin, or how you pray, you can build a better life. This shooting was a brutal, racial attack on two men, and on the fundamental values of our nation. It follows a spate of hate-motivated attacks on others in this country," the newly-elected Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi from Illinois said.
"We can't let hatred win. Extremely saddened to hear the news out of Kansas. My sympathies go out to the victims and their families," the Indian-American Democratic Senator from California Kamala Harris said in a tweet.
"This is not normal. We must declare our entire country a hate-free zone and fight to protect it as such. During this moment of tragedy, I stand with Indian-Americans, Muslim- Americans, and all groups impacted by the dangerous rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration," Washington Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, also a debutant on the Hill, said, maintaining that hate crimes have risen as a result of the Trump administration's controversial ideas against immigrants.
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