Monday, June 20, 2016

42!

Sabeen Mahmud would have been 42 today.
She once gave me a T-Shirt that said "42 is the Answer" on the Front … and "What is the Question?" on the Back.
(The question came from Douglas Adams: In the radio series and the first novel, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the *Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything* from the supercomputer, 'Deep Thought', specially built for this purpose. It takes 'Deep Thought' 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. 'Deep Thought' points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings who instructed it never actually knew what the Question was.)
I miss Sab everyday and think of so many things from the 26 years she was with me.
•••••
Last year, on Sab's first birthday soon after her assassination, David Berne put up a Poster of her that is reproduced here.

(Thanks, DB).
•••••
A few days ago Jo Cox was also assassinated in the UK. Reading about her life and aspirations I thought of Sabeen many times. Jo was also going to be 42 this year … just two days after Sabeen's birthday.