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Dance and despair for India in memory of murdered journalist Gauri Lankesh

A birthday letter to a colleague and comrade explores the hatreds poisoning India and the hope and joy that Gauri brought to counter them

Dance and despair for India in memory of murdered journalist Gauri Lankesh
In September 2017, Indian journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead in her garden | Kavitha Lankesh. All rights reserved
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Dear Gauri,

Two days from today you turn 60. What would we have done to celebrate this key milestone? There would surely have been anger and tears with the joys and spirits of celebration. We would have argued and bickered about how to be together in the third surge of the pandemic: you, me, Kavitha, Esha and your mother too. But together we would have been. Together, though painfully separated, we are still.

On 5 September 2017, that bleak night, seven hate-filled bullets snatched you away from us, even as you walked through the lovely tree- and plant-laden garden of your home. The home where we sat and shared, always charting new paths of challenge to the hate that was poisonously eating away around us.