My favorite story of Kavi happened in Mrs. Antilla’s English class. We were told to consider the ethical paradox described in the classic thought experiment called “The Trolley Problem.”

The story is you happen upon a train track to which five people have been tied down to. A train is coming and will certainly kill all five people. There is no time to attempt to untie them. However, you are standing by a switch – a switch that will change the path of the train onto another track avoiding the five people who would otherwise die. The catch is that on the other track there is one person who is tied down.

Mrs. Antilla gravely looked around the room and asked, “So… is the correct decision to pull the switch, killing the one person who otherwise would have lived were it not for your intervention? Or should you leave yourself out of the equation entirely, allowing the tragedy to unfold as it would have had you not been around at all, ending with the death of five innocent people?”

“Kavi, what do you think?”

Kavi, nonplussed by the moral gravity of this tragic scenario leaned back on his chair, shrugged his shoulders and curtly responded, “Eh. Depends if they’re white.”