Two years after Mumbai blasts, wounds are still sore

His father Jayprakash takes the 21-month old Prachiti to the city hospital every week end, hoping that his son would come out of the coma one day. Jayprakash nurtures a feeling that Prachiti’s childish prattle will spring back his son from the slumber.

An assistant manager with construction firm, Parag had got married just months before the July 11, 2006 attack on suburban trains which claimed 187 lives.

The 28-year-old Parag had taken a Virar-bound train and was to alight at Mira Road station when a blast ripped through his first class compartment maiming him badly at a time when his wife, Priti, was in the family way.

“Every weekend, I take Prachiti, who is now 21 months old, to visit her father lying lifeless on a hospital bed,” Jayprakash said.

He said though children are not allowed into the trauma care centre of Hinduja hospital “I take her there as a special case”.

Jayprakash prays that the toddler’s ramblings one day stir his son out of the coma. Parag’s wife is also hopeful he will pull through even as five neurosurgeries had been performed on him.

He, however, needs specialised treatment that is available only in Japan. Jayprakash said the Railways had been taking care of the entire treatment till now but the cost of the therapy in Japan would have to be borne by the family.

Priti, who had discontinued her studies after marriage, has over the past two years done a computer course and is now working as a reservation clerk with Western Railways.

The tale of the Sawant family is similar to that of the Singhs. 23-year-old Amit Singh survived the blasts but like Parag, he too drifted into a coma.

Singh, who was doing B.Com at the time of the incident, was returning home in Virar from his college at Churchgate when the train he was travelling in was ripped apart by an explosion at Mira Road station.

“Amit left home at 6 in the morning on that day and called me in the afternoon saying he would try to be back soon. That was the last I heard from him,” his father Dinesh Singh remembers.

When the family found Amit had not returned, a frantic search began for him at every hospital and railway station. “After 72 hours of search, we located Amit at Jaslok hospital. He had slipped into a coma and has not woken up ever since,” Singh said.

With tears in his eyes, his father said it was a tragedy for the entire family as “Amit’s life has been put on hold and so is ours”.