I first met Nachu Bhatnagar in the fall of 2010 shortly after his cancer diagnosis when I was assigned as his home instructor for English. Nachu was a passionate student of history with a stunning intellectual drive. During the next seven months Nachu embarked on an intense study of two books, devoured political commentary, analyzed current events and popular culture, and critiqued the performance of candidates in the early Republican debates.

Nachu loved many books, but by far his favorite was Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. As many high school students know, the book is a fictional account of a modern day, worldwide Zombie attack. Nachu described the book as “deep and cerebral” because it “talks about the world, culture, change, how people handle things and how people are,” while at the same time providing “an interesting veneer of the Zombie apocalypse.” He prized his copy of the book so much he refused to write in it so as to keep it “pure,” and even though he had read it 30 times, he eagerly selected World War Z for our study of English.

Now as literary genres go, Zombie lit was for me uncharted terrain: What is a Zombie, anyway? I wondered. I then created a chapter study template to identify essential questions: What does it mean to be a human? Is it right to abandon morality for survival? Is it ever justifiable to destroy art in the name of ideology? Is it unethical to persuade people to buy what they don’t need? Nachu thrived on analyzing human motivation and was quick to connect events in World War Z with real-life, scenarios, past and present.

In a way, I’m still reading with Nachu. This spring I began reading a book by Harry Turtledove, one of Nachu’s favorite authors. When I read it, I remember my special student and friend, and imagine his thoughts.

Mrs. Pam Brown