On July 11, 2006, when a blast ripped apart the first class compartment of a Borivali local at Santacruz leaving behind a trail of death and destruction, Rubina Khan gave bedsheets and water bottles to help the injured. Little did she know that her husband, Ashfaq Khan, was being rushed to the hospital in one of those bedsheets.

Khan, a section engineer (electric) at Churchgate, sustained head injuries and remained in coma for three months. And when he regained consciousness, 53-year-old Khan, a father of twins, was a different man.

“He has lost his memory. Sometimes he can’t even recognise me,” says Rubina.

He returned to his Santacruz home after six months in the hospital. “I could never have imagined that my husband was being shifted to a hospital in one of the bedsheets I had donated. When he did not come home till late in the night, we got worried. At about 3 am, Jaslok Hospital staff informed me that my husband had been badly injured,” she recalls. He was admitted to V N Desai Hospital initially and then shifted to Jaslok Hospital.

Khan, who suffered haemorrhage on the right side of his brain, was operated thrice. He underwent one more surgery for the injury he sustained in his liver from a nail.

“He remained in coma for three months before being discharged from the hospital in December. His doctor says that after a year, a plastic flap will be put to fill the gap on the right side of his head where a piece of the skull bone was chipped off in the blast,” Rubina says.

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