Honoring the Life and Memory of Kiran Bapna
Donation protected
Dear colleagues,
We lost our beloved colleague Kiran Bapna due to an accident while she was out hiking with her family. There were news reports that she fell while taking a selfie and other reports of her hiking alone. Kiran’s family would like everyone to know that they were together on a family trip with 12 people in all and everyone was taking care in navigating the trail. Nevertheless, the heartbreaking reality is that Kiran slipped and fell into a river that was surging at that very moment.
Kiran has worked at Google for almost 20 years and over those years, she’s touched several thousands of colleagues with her kindness, her caring, and that special combination of gentleness combined with relentless tenacity.
So as colleagues and people who wish to honor Kiran, what can we do now? Anne Frank wrote, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” In that spirit, perhaps we can take action on some of the things that Kiran cared about, which include:
- Wellness and intentional eating – Maybe you’ve thought about improving your wellbeing through breathwork, meditation, improved diet, increased exercise, or other means, but never fully got around to it. We think Kiran would be very proud if you took the next step. She always cared deeply about everyone’s wellbeing.
- Sustainability and the environment – Whatever you can do, big or small, to take care of the one Earth we all share together. Kiran was fond of giving little saplings as gifts during Diwali and other occasions. You can consider volunteer work or giving to your favorite environmental charity.
- Giving to a local charity – In Kiran’s home city of Bangalore, she supported ISKCON Bangalore and got it added to our company's giving platform. In addition to the spiritual connection, Kiran valued this organization’s meal program, especially providing meals to children so that they could focus on education and not on hunger. Or give to a charity in your local community. We think Kiran would be happy and proud either way.
Lastly, we set up this GoFundMe for the benefit of a charity that Kiran cared a great deal about, ISKCON Mayapur: Museum of the Vedic Planetarium (MOVP). Kiran was most recently working on getting this charity added to Google's employee giving platform so that it could receive company matching for donations. She was successful in doing that just before she passed. Donations to this GoFundMe will go toward this charity. You can read more about this charity and its initiatives here.
Thank you everyone for expressing your care and concern. Thank you everyone for supporting each other and for the way you honor our beloved colleague, Kiran.
Organiser and beneficiary
Tom Thai
Organiser
San Rafael, CA
Deepak Bapna
Beneficiary