[Top: Friends comforting Ms Lo's distraught husband, Mr Puhaindran.]

FOR many Singaporeans, the name Lo Hwei Yen is inextricably linked to the Mumbai terrorist attacks that left at least 170 other victims dead and 200 injured.

But for family, friends and relatives of the 28-year-old lawyer, she is best remembered as a vivacious girl with a "trademark giggle".

At the wake held at Teresa Ville, her family's condominium estate in Lower Delta Road, her favourite jazz music by Diana Krall and Stacey Kent was played while friends put up a slide show of her best moments.

She and her husband, Mr Michael Steven Puhaindran, 37, had just got married last June. The folio of photos showed the two at their wedding and during their travels to Paris, as well as other cheerful occasions.

Ms Lo was dressed in a red cheongsam, said younger sister, Hwei Shan, 25. The eldest daughter had worn the dress to her Chinese wedding ceremony.

Her serene features hid the fatal gunshot wounds to her head and abdomen. According to an uncle, she was the one most doted on by the family. "Her father would not deny her anything," he told my paper.

A bleary-eyed Mr Puhaindran was comforted by 200 friends, family and neighbours.

A close circle of friends had set up a task force that took care of the funeral arrangements and the press, a moving testimony to the couple's popularity.

Mrs Ila Maheshwari, 63, and Mrs Savita Kapoor, 52, housewives who lived in nearby blocks, paid their respects.

Mrs Kapoor said tearfully: "We have been neighbours for the last 25 years, and we actually never met them. Then we read from the papers that she was from Teresa Ville, and we felt we had to come."

Described by Hwei Shan as a "fashionista", Ms Lo will be wearing her favourite earrings, shoes and peach-pink Hermes handbag during the last leg of her journey.

Her funeral will be held at the Church of St Teresa on Thursday and she will be cremated at the Mandai Columbarium.

Members of the public can pay their respects at the wake during the day until Wednesday.

rachchan@sph.com.sg

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