So many memories have resurfaced as I write my book. This one hit hard.
The summer I turned 15, I loaded my cello onto a bus and took a day’s journey from my hometown of Ottawa to a music academy in Charlevoix, Quebec.
Aruna Anantaraman at 15, after winning the Edythe Young Browne Trophy for top marks in violin. Photo: Courtesy Anant Anantaraman
As the bus lumbered along the St. Lawrence River, I gazed out the window, willing it to go faster. I couldn’t wait to be reunited with musicians from my youth orchestra, and maybe get pointers from an international soloist or two.
After the sweltering ride, I lugged my cello past a cluster of weathered buildings to the girls’ dormitory. I saw many familiar faces as I unpacked my things. But the bunk beds were filling up fast, with no sign of our principal violinist, or her whiz-kid sister from the second violins. Strange. Normally they’d be there.
I called out, “Where are Rupa and Aruna?”
The room froze. Everyone stared.
“Didn’t you hear?” one of the girls said at last. “They died in the Air India crash.”
The room of faces blurred before my eyes. Dazed, I shook my head. “No way,” I said. The terrorist bombing had been all over the news. But Air India Flight 182 had departed from Montreal—not Ottawa. Rupa and Aruna couldn’t have been on board.
If only that were true.
The two sisters had traveled to Montreal to catch the flight. On June 23, 1985, the bomb exploded while the passenger jet was in mid-air, sending the bodies of all 329 people—Aruna, Rupa and their mother, Bhawani, too—hurtling into the Irish Sea.
A cellist from my orchestra filled me in. “One of their violin cases was found floating in the wreck.”
Oh, God. I felt nauseous, sickened by the news. Everyone must have been talking about it for weeks. But I had kept myself scarce all summer, avoiding my expectant mom. Nine days before I left for music camp, she gave birth to a baby sister in my parents’ bedroom. I’d spent my days working for a family friend, stacking boxes in her clothing warehouse and wiping the dust off her orange tree, leaf by leaf.
I didn’t know how to explain my ignorance of the tragedy to the girls in my orchestra. While everyone else filed out for dinner, I just stood there, stunned.
I couldn’t believe I’d never see Rupa and Aruna Anantaramana again. We’d played together in the National Capital String Academy every week for more than two years.
I got the feeling she was enraptured by the music, and wanted to sweep everyone else away too.
Aruna was my age, studious and wildly talented. Music took up most of our free time, but we always smiled at each other during rehearsals. I had a soft spot for little Rupa, too. The youngest in our group, just 11 years old, she followed her big sister like a duckling.
Aruna had impeccable technique on the violin, but I never thought about the mechanics of bow strokes or hand positions when she played. I got the feeling she was enraptured by the music, and wanted to sweep everyone else away too.
Rupa was fast on her heels, displaying a talent some described as “almost Mozartian.”
Their father, Anant Anantaraman, and mother, Bhawani, came to every concert, every Saturday afternoon rehearsal. Their lives seemed to revolve around music out of sheer joy.
Music, it turned out, was the idea behind the Air India flight.
Music, it turned out, was the idea behind the Air India flight. Their mother was taking them to India to give her family a chance to hear her daughters play. Their father, a scientist in the Department of National Defence, stayed in Ottawa for work.
I could hardly imagine his horror. He lost his entire family in a flash of light.
Months went by.
The following spring, I performed in the Kiwanis Music Festival—my first competition. Shaking with nerves, I stammered my way through the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto. Nevertheless, the judges gave me top marks, and declared me the winner of the Edythe Young Browne Trophy for strings. But where was the prize?
“Wait here,” one of the festival organizers said.
I waited so long that volunteers in the auditorium began to stack up the chairs. Then, from a far corner of the room, a man walked up to me holding a golden cup the size of a punch bowl. His eyes were sunken, and his hair was pure white. Startled, I realized he was Aruna’s father. The last time I’d seen him, his hair was black.
I stared at the hunk of gilded metal in his arms. Aruna must have won the trophy the previous year. I didn’t know what to say. He handed it to me, not saying much either. Then he gave me something else: a photo of Aruna, radiant and beautiful, holding the golden cup near her face.
I thanked him, my face burning.
Me at 16, holding Aruna’s trophy a year after I won the prize. Photo: Russell Barton
The trophy collected dust in a corner of our house for a year until it was my turn to pass it along. At the last minute, my stepfather convinced me to pose for a photo in the park down the street. “We should document this,” he said. I squinted in the sunlight, gripping the trophy with a forced smile.
I still have the photo of Aruna holding the same cup, brimming with happiness, two months before she fell from the sky.
Thirty-five years have passed since the Air India bombing, the biggest mass murder in Canada’s history. Two of the kindest, brightest girls I’ve ever known will be forever listed as victims of terrorism. This saddens me now more than ever.
During this brutal pandemic, hundreds of thousands have died—of opioid overdose, police violence, COVID-19. I cannot say their names. There are too many to remember. Instead, I’ve found myself shedding fresh tears at the thought of Aruna’s warm smile, and the little red jacket Rupa used to wear. My grief takes me aback. After all, it’s been years. But this is a cleansing pain, searing through the numbness that comes from reading so many names, on so many lists.
Aruna and Rupa’s names are engraved in the Air India Memorial in Toronto, in Humber Bay Park East. Photo: Artur / CC BY-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Last month, I searched for news of Aruna’s father, wondering what happened to him. I read about the music scholarships he set up in his daughters’ names, and the foundation he established in honour of his wife.
Then something dawned on me: His gift to me of Aruna’s photo that day might have been a first step in making sure his family was never forgotten.
Years after the crash, Dr. Anantaraman founded a tuition-free school in southern India for children in need. The school offers hot meals and high academic standards, emphasizing the values of tolerance and peace. “I was searching for a reason to live, any little straw, any little twig, to give a point to my life,” he told a reporter.
Working with children helped him cope with the loss of his family, especially his daughters, he said.
“Aruna and Rupa, to me are still 15 and 11. They never grew up. They are just the way I saw them the last time, so beautiful, so innocent, wonderful, and talented, playing their Bach and Vivaldi.”
That’s how I will always picture them too.
In memory of Aruna and Rupa Anantaraman.
Postscript: Last month I got in touch with Dr. Anantaraman, now in his 80s, to ask his permission to publish Aruna’s photo. We hadn’t spoken since I was a teenager, and I didn’t want to add to his pain. To my relief, he welcomed my letter. In his twilight years, he wrote, hearing from a friend of his daughters brought vivid memories, and “moments of tearful joy.”