A grieving family relates yearlong paean of grief
TODAY marks one year since 20-year-old Demerara Bank employee Sheema Mangar, was deliberately run down and killed while attempting to retrieve her cellphone from a thief, who had snatched her phone even while she was trying to call her family to tell them she was on her way home, as was her normal habit.
As an unbelievable past year is relived by a deeply grieving family, that overwhelmingly traumatic event is replayed in the memories of a father, a mother, a little brother, a grandmother, other family members, even while the loss of the “shining star” of the Mangar family has still not yet sunken in.
Last Wednesday Lalbachan went to clean Sheema’s tomb at the Good Hope cemetery.  It was then it hit him like a ton of bricks that his adored daughter was “dead for real”, because he tried to embrace the tomb, but instead of the warm, yielding flesh of his daughter, only cold hard stone  filled his arms; and he lay down on Sheema’s tomb and cried until he dropped asleep.
When Sheema was alive she and her very young parents, along with her little brother were all each other’s buddies and best friends; but she shared a most special bond with her dad, with whom she would cuddle up and relate all her day’s activities, as well as share her dreams and aspirations; while hardworking Lallbachan strategized, even as she spoke, on the ways he would fulfill her ambitions and her visions for the future.  But last Wednesday all that filled Lallbachan’s loving arms was cold, unyielding stone.  There would never again be his Sheema to snuggle up to him and together share dreams and ambitions for the future.
Lallbachan greeted the Chronicle with a composed, smilingly courteous visage, but this was a façade, because soon the tears of his every waking moment’s purgatory were pouring down his face, and the unanswered questions that would forever remain unanswered were pouring from his lips.
“We were very poor, but we were all born and raised in the church and always lived with God’s laws; so why did he allow this to happen?
“How could so many persons see this happen to someone’s daughter and not help her – and now that it has happened, why are the witnesses not talking so that she can get justice?
“Why, one year after, can the people responsible for providing justice to the citizens of this land provide any answers to our questions?
“Why are criminals allowed to walk with freedom in this country, commit all kinds of crimes against law-abiding citizens, take away their properties and their lives with impunity, and then are protected by the laws, and the guardians of the laws?”
And his even more agonizing cry:  “Why is my bright, beautiful daughter, who had never hurt anyone in her life, lying in a tomb today while the person who cold-bloodedly murdered her for her own cellphone walks free and is probably robbing and murdering other persons, even as we speak?”
Lallbahan and Radhika were two lonely children who met in church and reached out to each other for the love and companionship that they were both starved of.
However, at age fifteen and fourteen, respectively, they found themselves in a dilemma – Radhika was pregnant, whereupon they took a decision that resulted in a perfect child being gifted to them:  Sheema, conceived in love and brought up with love.
Lallbachan, who had been forced to abort his education to being working to support himself from age ten, had been saving up for a church wedding.  He had already bought the wedding rings and was, bit by bit, planning to purchase every other requirement for the couple’s dream wedding; but this unheralded contretemps brought harsh reality to supersede their dream life – and fructified in a dream life; albeit one achieved after much hard work, great sacrifice, and unrelenting efforts to achieve upward mobility for the little family.
Theirs was the perfect family and, as little brother Jason said, Sheema was the “Shining Star” around which the family revolved; until a murderous thief simultaneously shattered the Mangar family’s shining star and dream and re-created instead a nightmare, from which none of the rest of the family seem able to extricate themselves.
Lalbachan related that, instead of getting married they had to sell their wedding rings to set up house then, when he realized that he was not earning enough to adequately support his family after Sheema’s birth, he sold household utensils to garner enough for passage for a passage to Suriname, where he had secured work.
However, baby Sheema was inconsolable at the absence of her father; while he was himself missing his family, so homesickness and worry about his family’s welfare, because that was a time when baby milk and foods had been banned and life was unbearably difficult in Guyana, forced him to leave his well-paying job to return home, where he eked out a living working at several jobs in order to provide for the needs of his family.
Radhika helped by setting up a “sweetie” stand, which subsequently evolved in a profitable confectionary business.
Jason soon came along to complete the little family.  Lallbachan explained that they wanted more children but decided that they would be content with the two because they wanted to be able to provide for their children all the things that they never had in their own lives, especially an education.
And their children never once disappointed them.  Big sister Sheema was the perfect role model for Jason, who said that he appreciates his parents’ strict but loving upbringing; but his sister was his tutor and best friend, whose loss has filled him with overwhelming pain and anger.
The Mangar family had acquired a house lot from the Government and, bit by bit they acquired material to build their dream home, storing the materials on the lot at the Mon Repos housing scheme.
However, the 2005 floods washed away all the accumulated sand and cement and destroyed many of the materials meant for the new home, a situation that recurred, to a lesser extent during the 2006 floods.
Starting all over again for the little family was difficult but they persevered and prevailed and finally moved into their new home; where Sheema could lock herself in her new room after a scolding from her mom, who did not allow long nails and mother and daughter would disagree over such minor flaws, although Sheema never argued with her mother, but would instead lose herself in her favourite pastime – reading for hours.
Her dad described her as the perfect child who never disobeyed and always tried to please. Her studies were also going well and soon she graduated from Queen’s College and found a job at Demerara Bank while yet pursuing courses in accountancy.
Her light-hearted, happy spirit charmed everyone, as it did Mr. Mohan of Starr computers who, when Lallbachan was short of $10,000 to buy a computer for his daughter and could not get anyone to lend him that sum, decided to compromise on his price and even took personal interest in the proper installation of the equipment.
Two colleagues were with her on that fateful day and they saw everything that happened to her, so they called the bank supervisor, who went to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation where the injured Sheema had been taken, but they did not see it fit to inform her parents, taking it upon themselves to make every decision.
Radhika, Jason and Lalbachan had just arrived home from the confectionary stall at Plaisance market and had been preparing dinner, all the while attempting to call Sheema, who was never late and always called Jason to pick her up with his bicycle when the bus dropped her off on the road, but their calls remained unanswered.
It was the mother of Sheema’s friend at the bank who made that fateful call to the family, but she only told them that someone had stolen her phone and that she was at the hospital; whereupon they conjectured that when her phone had been stolen the shock had made her collapse.
The gravity of the situation only impacted when they arrived at the hospital and saw Sheema lying on a trolley prepped for surgery – crying out incessantly “mama, papa, oh God!”.
However, the Demerara Bank executives, who were still ignoring her parents, decided to remove her to the St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital, while Lallbachan and Radhika stood by helplessly by – simple people stunned by the magnitude of the tragedy that had befallen them, and intimidated by officialdom.
Radhika bemoans the fact that she allowed the bank officials to remove her daughter from the public institution, where she was already receiving treatment, to an institution that was only oriented for business and where the attending doctors only spoke Hindi with the bank officials.
In the meantime Sheema had been left bleeding away in the ambulance for almost two hours before they took her into the hospital.  Then they discovered that they did not have blood to give her the required transfusion; so the family found donors.
However, the doctors decided that they would not take the blood from the donors until the next morning and left without explaining anything to the anxious parents, who had been kept outside all the time, never again allowed to see their daughter alive.  All the while Sheema had remained conscious screaming for “Mama, dada.”
At one o’clock that morning a staff member informed her family that she had expired.
The stunned family did not expect this news because, except for some bruises on her face there were no visible injuries and Sheema had remained conscious all the while.  The rest is history.
The prognosis was that Sheema had died from a ruptured spleen and “other injuries.”
Lalbachan is questioning whether anyone dies from a ruptured spleen unless that person is left to bleed out from that injured spleen; and if the “other injuries” were life-threatening in any way.
Also, Radhika is asking if her daughter was so badly injured why was she left for hours in the ambulance and why was the blood offered by the donors not accepted so that she could have received it in a timely way.  She also wants to know that, if her daughter died in her uniform, why was she denuded of her clothes after her demise, and why were those clothes discarded, even though this was a criminal case.
Also, what is bothering the parents is that the car originally impounded by the police, which was described by Radhika’s male associate, who had given chase behind Radhika while her female associate stood stunned, allowed into the custody of the registered owner, when blood and human hair was found under a damaged bonnet.  Also Lalbachan said a senior officer named Cosbert had iterated that they had “…the right car and the right man.”
Yet he was allowed out on station bail, and then let go completely while the police went after another vehicle under which they found a piece of cloth similar to Sheema’s uniform material.  But Sheema’s parents are contending that this could be a similar piece of cloth just planted there to divert attention from the real culprit and they have completely lost faith in Guyana’s justice system because, whenever they ask the police for answers, they are told that it is police business, nor theirs.
Radhika exclaims poignantly: “My daughter is dead and they are telling me that it is not my business.”
However, she refuses to give up because she feels that would be betraying the memory and spirit of her daughter.
As she explained, Sheema had lost several cellphones to thieves.  However, this last one had not yet been paid for because she had bought it from a friend whom she was paying in monthly instalments.  Her daughter displayed courage in demanding what belonged to her and she feels that she could do no less fro Sheema, who was the family’s most prized possession.
As tears poured from her eyes, Radhika said: “I wanted her to be more than me.  I set goals and boundaries and set rules as guidelines, which she always followed; and she always delivered.  She was an ideal daughter who was like golden sunshine in this house.  If I let go then it would seem that I have no value for my daughter.
“Now I can see colours only in black and white.  All the joy has gone out of this home.”
Jason, reiterating what his mom had said, related that on Sundays, while he helped his mom in the confectionary shop while his dad did carpentry work wherever he could find jobs, Sheema was expected to do the household chores.  However, she would immerse herself in a book and forget the time untile he would mischievously call her and tell her that they are on their way home, then she would fly through the house to complete the housework, after which – gauging the time, Jason would call her and tell that they had not yet left the shop; but, despite his constant teasing she loved her little brother, who says that he will never let his parents or his sister down, because she will forever be his “shining star.”
Lalbachan asks that if parents work day and night, sacrificing themselves to give their children what they never had, how is it right for someone to snatch that child’s life and then walk away scotfree to enjoy his own life?  He said he would have preferred that he had died in his daughter’s place, because forevermore life for him would be a desolate wasteland where he just wanders – taking one day at a time.
The Guyanese society seems to have become merciless, because what is horrifying about this murder is that it happened with hundreds of persons looking on.
The juncture on Camp and —–road is where hundreds of commuters wait, especially on Friday afternoons, for transportation to the East Coast Demerara corridor of villages.
That junction is located between two intersections where there are traffic lights, and in a highly commercialized zone where shoppers, pedestrians and the lights themselves stall traffic for long periods.  Vehicles travelling this route are most often reduced to a crawl; and especially so on a busy Friday afternoon at approximately six o’clock.
Why did no one help Sheema; and why is no one prepared to come forward to identify the culprit?
Even as another father and mother lost their only child to a gunman’s bullets earlier this week, judges and magistrates are setting free perpetrators who have committed armed robbery and have criminal records longer than the lives that they wantonly snuff out.
As the Mangar family is asking: Why are criminals allowed more rights and freedoms than the decent, law-abiding citizens of the land?