Gracefully

I had never heard of this person. Until last night, when a friend who came for dinner mentioned going to his funeral/memorial service in Bangalore last week. He was her brother's close friend. Her description of the sad way he went brought back, incongruously, memories of many uneasy moments while hiking in Madagascar several years ago (like this one that I could later laugh at).

In that way that an unusual name or event sometimes crops up again, this morning a friend in Washington sent a long note after several months, filling me in on various things in his life. To my surprise, he mentioned the same tragedy: turns out the young man was one of his oldest friends too. (Later, it wasn't so surprising -- the ages and hometowns, backgrounds and life experiences, are a broad match).

So then I did a little googling, and found this moving tribute to the man, with some gripping photographs.

And for no reason I can pinpoint, I stopped short at one quote in there, unable for a while to read any more. Joseph Olapally, wrote the girl he was with in Thailand, "fell gracefully."