They also describe her as someone who always saw the best in people and was always upbeat.

“I never heard her say anything negative about anything or anybody,” said Sutri’s boyfriend Anand R. Shah ’99-’00. He described her as a “glass half full kind of person.”

As a student, Surti was devoted to her studies. Raman called her a person “who lived for learning.”

Rena Fonseca, senior tutor of Mather House and a senior lecturer in Indian studies, remembered Surti as one of the most dedicated students in her seminar on modern Indian history.

“I remember being struck by her serenity, her friendly warmth, and by her obvious delight in all the possibilities of her life at Harvard and at Mather,” said Fonseca in an e-mail message.

As well as being a devoted scholar while at Harvard, she was also active in numerous extracurricular activities. Particularly she was involved in several performing arts groups, including Gunghroo and the Kuumba Singers and service programs organized through the Phillips Brooks House Association. She was also an active member of Harvard’s South Asian Association.

Surti volunteered teaching children in Costa Rica during one summer while she was in college and while she studied abroad in Spain for a semester had also found time to teach children.