Letting Harish go

The Rana family waits for the Supreme Court to decide on what could be a transformative case in passive euthanasia in India

- BY KANU SARDA

On the mornings, the house smelled of tea and toast. By afternoon, there was the rustle of textbooks being rifled through. The evenings were the loudest. The television would be on, the kitchen would be alive with the clang of vessels, and three siblings would be speaking at once, arguing, laughing.

Nirmala Rana knew exactly who would come home first, who would ask for food, and who would disappear into their room. Ashok would return from work, take off his shoes, open the newspaper and call out to his children one by one, asking how their day had been.

Harish, the eldest, moved through the house with quiet authority. He was disciplined, strong and ambitious—a final-year civil engineering student who spoke of site work and gym routines with equal seriousness. Ashish, younger by several years, followed him around, learning without asking. Their sister, the youngest, balanced studies and household work, navigating expectations that were never spoken aloud. It was a simple middle-class home in Delhi—a 25-year-old house built through years of savings and patience. A house where the future felt predictable, even secure.

That life ended on August 20, 2013. The phone rang at 7.21pm. Harish had fallen from the fourth-floor balcony of his rented room near Panjab University in Mohali. By the time Ashok and Nirmala reached the hospital, he had already undergone emergency brain surgery. Doctors spoke in careful, technical terms: severe neurological damage, extensive trauma and irreversible injury. One sentence stayed with them the longest—the nervous system had dried up.