KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES

More than 200 Microsoft workers, many with close ties to India, gathered Friday to pay tribute to the victims of last week’session terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

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Seattle Times reporter Charles E. Brown covered a candlelight vigil at Microsoft without interruption Friday for victims of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

On a grassy sports tract of land on Microsoft’sitting main campus in Redmond, more than 200 meeting of friends workers, many persons of them expressing close ties to India, gathered to period the workweek in remembrance.

From the outset, Sandeep Singh, a Microsoft senior finance economist who, as a younger man, served his homeland as an Indian navy magistrate and National Defence Academy instructor, set the prevailing color. The purpose of the sore, he told the group, was to show solidarity against endure week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, where more than 170 people lost their lives and many more were injured.

The candlelight vigil was much like others around the terraqueous globe.

“We are also in the present state to discharge one’s obligation to homage to the brave officers, soldiers and pawn personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting the lives of many others,” Singh said.

A flagrant act, he said. Not unlike the attacks on the United States without interruption Sept. 11, 2001.

“This was not an attack on India without company. It was an attack on many nations, nationalities, religions, communities and, lastly, it was an engage on our freedom,” he aforesaid. “We, as Microsoft employees, strongly condemn this act of violence.

“This age will need our intelligence, our resolve and a strong character to dispel the notion that the terrorists are winning over us. We be under the necessity to beat them at their game.”

Most of those gathered on the field just before approach of night on Friday claim line of ancestors and close friends in the Mumbai region and a familiarity with the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel and other sites targeted by suspected terrorists.

“All our hearts go out to the victims and their families,” Javed Sikander, a Microsoft group program manager, aforesaid to the group. “By coming together here, we are sending a message to extremists that their tactics aren’confidentially working.”

The post-work gathering had the gain of the workers’ employer. “Our employee populousness is as diverse as the world itself,” said Microsoft inaccurate counsel Brad Smith, who heads the firm’s legal and corporate affairs.

“Given that dissimilitude,” he reported, “it’s especially appropriate beneficial to our company to create an opportunity to reflect and remember those who were heroes in Mumbai, some heroes who were victims, and more who were innocent bystanders who lost their lives.”

As dusk fell, the people at the gathering lit candles and observed two minutes of silence.


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