By Howard Koplowitz
Relatives and friends of Ghanwatti Boodram gave their final good−byes last week to the 40−year−old Guyanese immigrant, who was killed when her Floral Park home exploded Friday.
Her husband, Dindial Boodram, said his wife “will be deeply missed.”
“They will miss their mother. They all talk about their mother,” he said during the Hindu services at the Dalton Funeral Home in Floral Park, referring to the couple’s three boys: Ryan, 10; Kevin, 9; and Chris, 6. “They’ll miss her a lot and I know I’ll take care of them.”
Ghanwatti, a nurse at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan, died after an explosion apparently caused by a gas leak ripped through her 260th Street home at around 5 p.m. April 24. Her husband and three children were not inside the home.
About six flower arrangements were behind Ghanwatti’s closed casket as a Hindu priest and mourners chanted prayers before members of her family spoke of her. Some family members waved a candle over Ghanwatti’s casket and sticks of incense were lit.
Ghanwatti’s brother−in−law from Canada spoke of how she and her family visited him two weeks ago.
“I still remember that day,” he said. “We had a really good time and she enjoyed the meal.”
A cousin of Ghanwatti, Malcolm Seemungal, called her “an incredible person.”
“Education was always her thing,” he said. “She encouraged her kids to do good in school. She always loved her kids. She always talked about her kids. She lived for her kids.”
Relatives said Ghanwatti loved to read, ride horses, go to the movies and shop, mostly at the Macy’s and Lord & Taylor in nearby Manhasset, L.I.
The Guyanese immigrant moved to Woodside at age 19 to further her education. She graduated from LaGuardia Community College with a nursing degree and followed that up with a bachelor’s in nursing from York College.
Before family members spoke of Ghanwatti, uncontrollable wails and cries filled the funeral home as relatives displayed their grief, some hovering over and touching her casket.
Teachers from PS 115, where Ghanwatti’s three boys attend school, paid their respects as well as state Assemblyman Mark Weprin (D−Little Neck).
“As a father of three kids, it breaks my heart,” he said. “The whole neighborhood has been feeling the pain that the family is feeling because they know [the explosion] could just have been easily their house.”
Weprin and PS 115 have been collecting money, gift cards, clothing and other items for Ghanwatti’s family.
Ann Harbajan, Ghanwatti’s aunt, said her co−worker’s are also helping out and made pleas to the television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” in an attempt to get the show to build a new house for the family.
“Everybody’s helping out. It’s great,” Dindial Boodram said during his wife’s wake April 29. “I had a beautiful wife.”
Reach reporter Howard Koplowitz by e−mail at hkoplowitz@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 173.
