Papa hospital la aahe, tyanna lagla aahe... jevha te chalayila lagnar aami ghari geun janar (Papa is in hospital, he has been hurt... We will take him home when he begins to walk).”

This is what Prachiti Sawant says each time her friends in nursery school ask her about her missing father. Prachiti was born three months after Parag Sawant slipped into semi-coma, severely wounded on 7/11 three years ago when a blast tore through the first class compartment of a Virar-bound train.

Parag, then 26, was an assistant sales manager. His wife Priti was pregnant, expecting their first child.

That daughter Prachiti has started going to school. She visits Hinduja Hospital once a month. Planting herself on her father, she tries to box with him. “No one weeps before her. She is like a beacon of hope in our lives,” says grand father Jaiprakash Sawant.

“Life seems perfect when we all are together. Yet we all long to be with him in our house,” says Priti. Parag’s mother Madhuri says he has begun to respond. “When we ask him who does Prachiti belong to, he points to himself.”

The going has not been easy for Priti. She has to go to work, leave Prachiti with her mother, attend to her husband, wrap up work at home and then attend night college. On weekends, she looks up her in-laws and they all wait for Parag.