Lo Hwei Yen . . . The Beautiful Angel in Michael’s Life . . .
Departed on 27 November 2008
dearly missed and fondly remembered by loved ones.
Wake will be held at 1005 Lower Delta Road, Teresa Ville
from 6 pm on Sunday, 30 November to Thursday, 4 December 2008
Daily Prayers from 8.00pm to 8.30pm
My beautiful angel Yen, without you my life has no meaning and no purpose.
You were everything to me and the time I spent with you was the happiest
of my life. Your family misses you more than words can express.
We love you so much and pray that God has you in His loving arms. . . .
MICHAEL PUHAINDRAN
Pen in your Condolences here
MR MICHAEL Puhaindran knew that lawyer Lo Hwei Yen was the woman he wanted to marry from the moment he met her. It was a brief encounter, along bustling Change Alley at Raffles Place, in 2006 when Ms Lo was a pupil with law firm Drew and Napier.
The 37-year-old recalled that he asked his friend: ‘Who’s the babe?’ So began their eight-month courtship, which led to their Bali wedding last year.
It is obvious Mr Puhaindran is still reeling from the loss of the woman he said he ‘waited all his life to find’. Minutes before he was to speak with reporters, he appeared distracted and lost in thought.
The only time he broke into a smile was when a friend pointed to a picture of Ms Lo and said something to him.
‘She had a smile that captured you. When you saw her smile, you knew that this was a person who smiled with her whole being,’ Mr Puhaindran said, when asked what had struck him most about his 28-year-old wife.
A second, chance encounter at coffee shop Spinelli presented Mr Puhaindran with an opportunity to ask Ms Lo out for lunch. Their first date was at San Marco’s at the Fullerton Hotel.
Certain that Ms Lo was the one for him, Mr Puhaindran popped the question on the first day of their holiday in the Maldives. She accepted immediately. ‘I had not planned to do it so soon, but I guess I just could not wait,’ he said.
They also had the same taste in music. ‘Even though she’s nine years younger than me, she liked retro music. We had a really good time,’ said Mr Puhaindran, referring to the Kylie Minogue concert they attended the day before she left for Mumbai.
Like all newly weds, they had the occasional tiff, but Mr Puhaindran described the last few weeks he had with her as the ‘best time of my life’. ‘She was my entire life, and everything I did, I did for her.’
He loved his wife so much that he would not even let her get wet in the rain.
‘I would do all I could to make her life as smooth as possible and she would do the same for me. Being unable to protect her…’ Mr Puhaindran broke off mid-sentence, clearly struggling with his pain.
The support of family and friends has helped him cope with his grief. ‘Before coming back to Singapore, I didn’t know how I was going to carry on.’
Regarding the future, Mr Puhaindran said that he is now ‘taking things one day at a time’. He has kept himself busy with the wake arrangements, making sure that everything is perfect, down to every last detail.
It is clear that Mr Puhaindran’s wife is still the centre of his life. When asked what she would have wanted for him, he faltered for a moment as he struggled to contain his emotions.
His voice cracked as he said: ‘She would want me to live my life.’
EVEN as she was being held by terrorists in her Mumbai hotel a week ago, Ms Lo Hwei Yen’s voice remained steady as she spoke with her husband on her mobile phone.
‘I was reacting to her trying to remain calm as well,’ her husband, Mr Michael Puhaindran, recalled yesterday.
‘Only in her very last sentence did she say: ‘Please tell them (the authorities) to hurry up’.
‘That’s when I really couldn’t take it and I told her I loved her so very much, and she said the same thing.
‘And those were her last words.’
Some time later, the 28-year- old Ms Lo was killed by her captors. She was one of several people who lost their lives in The Oberoi Trident Hotel, one of several Mumbai landmarks attacked by terrorists whose rampage left over 180 dead.
Yesterday, during his wife’s wake, Mr Puhaindran spoke to reporters for the first time about her last hours.
While the 37-year-old was composed at the start of the 40-minute interview attended by some 20 journalists and cameramen, by the time it ended, he had broken down several times.
He said he last saw his wife on Wednesday last week when he drove her to the airport for an early morning flight to Mumbai. The lawyer was heading to India’s financial centre to deliver a talk on the impact of the credit crunch on the shipping industry.
The couple, who were married over a year ago, exchanged text messages throughout the day, but around midnight Ms Lo called her husband on her mobile phone.
‘She sounded calm but there’s a slight degree of urgency in her voice. She was having dinner but they heard some commotion outside. It sounded like gunshots,’ Mr Puhaindran recalled.
The shots came from terrorists who had stormed the high-end Oberoi, armed with machine guns and grenades.
About 15 minutes later, the couple spoke again. This time, Ms Lo told her husband she was cooped up in a 10th-floor stairwell with some hotel security guards and other staff, waiting for the police.
He held off calling her for 45 minutes, not wanting to blow her cover.
When he tried to call again later, ‘the phone would ring but nobody picked it up’.
Unbeknown to her husband, Ms Lo had been taken hostage.
Then came a call at about 6am.
‘She was talking in a completely steady voice. She said she was being held hostage by gunmen…armed with machine guns and grenades,’ said Mr Puhaindran.
The terrorists gave Ms Lo a message for her husband: Get the Singapore Government to tell the Mumbai authorities to refrain from storming the hotel – or she would lose her life.
‘Needless to say, we went completely nuts,’ said Mr Puhaindran, who informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Officials conveyed the message to the top levels of the Indian government.
While she was held captive, Ms Lo also managed to send out a few e-mail messages through her BlackBerry. One message sent to three close friends at about 6.30am described her capture.
‘She ended off by saying: ‘If I don’t make it out of here, I love you all’,’ said Mr Puhaindran.
‘Despite everything she was facing, she still had the strength and courage to tell her friends that she loved them…I want people to know she was a brave Singaporean…that’s how brave she was.’
She would call her husband a final time when she asked him to tell the authorities to hurry.
Thirty-six hours later, on Friday evening, Mr Puhaindran was walking through the lobby of the Oberoi, which was covered in blood and broken glass. It had taken commandos two days to clear the building, which was still being swept for bombs.
There was no electricity. The building was ‘pitch-black’ as he climbed a stairwell; each step slippery because the sprinklers had gone off.
When he reached the 19th floor, Mr Puhaindran saw his wife’s body and he touched her cheek.
Someone passed him her handbag, which had her mobile phone, with about 150 missed calls, and her wedding ring.
‘Thank God they allowed me to see her where she lay…and they showed her to me,’ he said. ‘She still looked very beautiful.’
SHE had on the tailored crimson cheongsam that she had worn for her wedding last year.
Beside Ms Lo Hwei Yen in her white coffin, the cherished Hermes Birkin bag that husband Michael Puhaindran had given her. The family had wanted the lawyer to look her best and be surrounded by favourite things and loved ones at the very end, said younger sister Hwei Shan, 25.
For her funeral, ‘we decided we wanted something very elegant, very tasteful, which is very much in line with my sister’s personal taste’, she said.
The body of the 28-year-old Singaporean, who was shot and killed by terrorists, arrived here from Mumbai early yesterday morning. Over 250 people turned up at her wake at the Lower Delta Road condominium where her family has lived for 18 years.
A white air-conditioned marquee was set up at the foot of the Teresa Ville block, filled with arrangements of white orchids, spider chrysanthemums and brassicas draped with strands of pearls. Inside, soft jazz played while a projector screened snapshots of Ms Lo.
And it was a photo of Ms Lo as a radiant bride that smiled down at the endless stream of visitors who had come to pay their respects through the night.
Among them were 10 Victoria Junior College schoolmates who turned up in chic, little black dresses, just as she would have liked, they said.
Ms Lo was taken hostage by terrorists at Mumbai’s Oberoi Trident hotel late last Wednesday, her body was found on the 17th floor two days later.
Accompanying her back home was a group of people including her devastated 37-year-old husband. Family members learnt from her firm Stephenson Harwood yesterday that Ms Lo had flown to Mumbai after she accepted an invitation to speak at a business seminar.
She delivered her talk mere hours before terrorists stormed her hotel.
Sister Hwei Shan said: ‘Her colleagues received a lot of positive feedback about her speech. It’s good to know she was respected by her peers.’
Ms Lo was charming and exuded confidence that was rooted in true ability, firm partner Durai Shunmugam told The Straits Times. She had the ‘rare ability to be strong and yet be soft…she’d put things across in such a way that you wouldn’t have a choice but to say ‘yes’ – and still you smile’, he said.
The firm’s Christmas party, which Ms Lo had been in charge of, has been cancelled, he added.
Known for being friendly and cheerful, she has had several hundred tributes on the networking site Facebook. Even her condo’s security guard was heard saying: ‘She was a very nice, cheerful lady.’
Others who arrived to pay their respects at the wake included MP Sam Tan (Tanjong Pagar GRC) and even strangers like Mumbai-born Ila Maheshwari, 62, who lived in the same condominium.
‘We don’t have words to express our grief,’ said the housewife.
Extracts from Channel news Asia, The Straits Time On-line
Their final few weeks of marriage were truly the best time of his life. Breaking his silence for the first time, husband of Singaporean hostage Lo Hwei Yen killed in the Mumbai attacks, Michael Puhaindran gave an insight into the life of the 28-year-old. Puhaindran proposed to Lo in the Maldives within eight months of meeting her.
He said: “Everything I did, I did for her. My whole life revolved around her and she truly was the meaning of my life.” But after a beautiful Bali wedding, things went horribly wrong last Wednesday.
The first sign of trouble came when Puhaindran received a call at midnight Singapore time when Lo heard gunshots while having dinner. “About 15 minutes later, she or I called. We spoke. She said she was in a stairwell on the 10th floor and she was with security and some staff, and they were waiting for the police,” he said. After that phone call was a few agonising silent hours of waiting. Then came another call in the early hours of the morning which confirmed Puhaindran’s fears. “She was talking in a very steady voice; she was extremely brave. Her voice didn’t even waver. (She said) that she was being held hostage by gunmen and she said they were armed with machine guns and grenades,” said Puhaindran.
He contacted Singapore authorities. Then came the final call.
“She said they said they still see activity, still in a very steady voice and still talking to me. I was trying to remain calm as well. Only in her last sentence, she said ‘please tell them to hurry up’. And that’s when I couldn’t really take it, and said that I love her very much, and she said the same thing. So at least the last words I said to her were those words,” Puhaindran continued.
Puhaindran recalled her last final e-mail. “This one came in about 6.36 am Singapore time. She ended off by saying if I don’t make it out of here I love you all. Despite everything she was facing, she still had the strength and courage to tell her friends she loved them. I do want you to tell people she was a brave Singaporean,” Puhaindran added.
Finally on Friday, he was let into the Oberoi hotel. He said: “They were still detonating grenades. Initially they did not want us go back but MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) got us permission to get to the 19th floor. Everything was pitch black because there was no electricity. The floors were slippery. I think the sprinklers must have gone off. Then (they) showed her to me and I was able to touch her cheek and she still looked very beautiful.”
While questions remain unanswered about the siege, for many like Puhaindran who lost loved ones during the terror attacks, picking up the pieces from here will now be hardest.
“She would want me to live my life but it’s going to be very hard,” said Puhaindran.
