Tea stall owner who lost son, mess worker whose mother and daughter perished: How time has stood still for kin of Air India crash’s ground victims

Aakash’s father Suresh Patni told The Indian Express that his family had gone to stay at their ancestral village for a while, performing the religious services. Meanwhile, the site where their kitli (stall) was once located, is now occupied by the police picket tent, some bedding and an industrial cooler set up as a shield against the blazing heat of the Gujarati summer.

Aakash’s mother Sita was severely burned on the right side of her body when she attempted to save her younger son. Speaking on his wife’s condition, Suresh Patni said, “My wife has severe burns and she has not yet healed but she had to come with us to Patan for the prayers of our son. So, we had her discharged from the civil hospital. We will admit her elsewhere once we return to Ahmedabad.”

Ravi Thakore, who lost his mother Sarla and daughter Aadhya, cannot think of working at the medical college again. On Friday, July 12, Aadhya would have turned two.

On the afternoon of June 12, Ravi and his wife Lalita had set out to deliver tiffins to doctors. They had left Aadhya with Sarla, a cook at the mess, when the crash happened. The bodies of Sarla and Aadhya were considered missing before they were identified by DNA profiling and handed over for final rites on June 19.

For the Thakore family, whose entire livelihood revolved around the medical college, with Sarla cooking for the students and Ravi, his wife, father, sister and brother-in-law delivering tiffins to doctors at the hospital, going back to work on the same premises is no longer an option. “It reminds us too much of what we have lost. We cannot set foot in that place again,” said Thakore, who also drives an auto rickshaw.