By: Srinath Rao and Rohit Alok Nearly three years ago, a 19-year-old Dilip Yadav was at the wheel of the ambulance that took Rajesh Khanna home after he passed away at Lilavati Hospital in Bandra. On Monday evening, Yadav drove his ambulance into Lilavati Hospital once again but exited bearing the body of NCP leader R R Patil, who had died a few hours earlier. Allahabad native Yadav, (22) will now be the man responsible for transporting Patil’s body to Sangli where his remains are scheduled to be cremated at noon on Tuesday. “It is an eight-hour drive to Sangli and we have to cover 400 kilometers. We should reach Sangli at 7 am on Tuesday,” said Yadav on Monday evening, as he waited at the NCP office in Nariman Point while party workers paid their last respects to Patil. Yadav, employed with Andheri-based Mumbai Ambulance Service — which has a tie-up with Lilavati Hospital — for the past seven years, the first three of them as a ward boy. Only a year after he began working as a driver, Yadav was tasked with taking Khanna home. “That was the last time I have seen so many people swarm around an ambulance,” he said. [related-post] “I was told to reach the hospital by 5 pm, while the paperwork was being completed inside. Once we were ready to leave, the whole family, as well as Dr Suresh Gupta who treated Patil, sat inside the ambulance,” Yadav said. With the police clearing the entire route between Bandra Reclamation and Nariman Point, the distance in peak hour traffic was covered in less than an hour. Yadav drove the ambulance into the NCP office a few minutes after 7 pm, surrounded by more than a hundred men. With the journey to Sangli set to begin at 9 pm, the entourage will include another ambulance, “in case something goes wrong on the way,” Yadav said. For now, Yadav does not his exact destination. “A policeman will sit beside me and give me directions,” he said. Yadav confessed that he was taken aback when he saw Patil’s body. “I have always seen him on TV but only today in person. Though his body was embalmed, he did look weak since he had been admitted in the hospital for a very long time,” he said. Having moved to Mumbai eight years ago with his family, Yadav now speaks fluent Marathi. “Whatever little conversation I had with the people in the ambulance was in Marathi. Yadav said that there were family members, who sat in the back of the ambulance with the body but he did not know their names. “I did not look behind. They were grieving before they got into the ambulance. I heard the family cry, but did not look at them either over my left shoulder or in the rear view mirror,” Yadav said adding, “ I could not dare to.”
