Remembering Michael Vinay Bhatia

Michael Vinay Bhatia, a student at St Antony's since 2001, was tragically killed on 7 May 2008 while working as a Social Scientist in Afghanistan. The loss of someone with such great potential is particularly sad and our thoughts are with his family and friends.

St Antony's College held a commemoration service to celebrate Michael's life on 16 May. Texts of the readings from the memorial service, where available, are linked below:

• The Warden, Professor Margaret MacMillan, spoke on behalf of Mrs Bhatia, Michael's mother
• A tribute from James Milner was read by Paul Petzschmann
• A tribute from Nicole Evans was read by Amna Khalid
• Alan Trammell spoke on behalf of the 2001 Marshall Scholars
• A tribute from Tricia Bhatia, Michael's sister, was read by Paul Domjan
• Professor Neil MacFarlane, Michael's supervisor, read 1 Corinthians 13
• Father Daniel Seward read a traditional bereavement poem

Click on the arrow below to watch a video of the memorial service. Alternatively, there is a higher resolution version - a much bigger, slower download - hosted on Sendspace.com. (Click on bhatia_reduced.mov and wait for it to download.)

A Facebook site has been set up entitled Honoring and Celebrating the Life of Michael Vinay Bhatia. There are also numerous tributes to Michael on the web, including the following:

• The Fearless One, an obituary by Antonian Sasha Polakow-Suransky writing in The Brown Alumni Magazine
• Academic Embedded with U.S. Army Killed by IED - NPR (National Public Radio), US
• The Loss of a Heart and a Mind - obituary by Jarat Chopra in The Brown Alumni Magazine
• The Milford Daily News - a report on the funeral
• Cherwell, an Oxford student newspaper
• Human Terrain System, US army
• The QWU Blog
• Respectance, created by Seth Resler
• Report in The Boston Globe, 10 May 2008
• Marshall Scholarship website
• Watson Institute website

Examples of Michael's work can be viewed on The Globalist's website.

Birthday party, 2004

Reading

Moving house

In academic dress

Having fun

Relaxing

Many thanks to the Watson Institute and to Michael's friends for the photos shown above.

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