For 78-year-old Tulsidas Gohil and his wife Ramadevi, September 5 is a special day. It’s their eldest son Kantilal’s birthday. If not for that train ride on July 11, they would have been celebrating the day, and for old time’s sake, talking about how he was their only son who broke away from the traditional Gujarati mould to become a civil engineer instead of a businessman.

“He was very intelligent. It was on his own initiative that he pursued engineering,’’ says Tulsidas of his son, who was an executive engineer with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). “He used to say he wanted to be a professional and not a businessman.’’

Nearly two months after his sudden death, the family at their Borivali (East) home is still trying to come to terms with the big void his absence has left. Eleven-year-old Aditya misses his father and says he didn’t mind so much when he at times scolded him for not studying. His sister Shreya, 22, can’t bring herself to talk about her planned wedding in December. And Kantilal’s elder daughter, Shruti Thakkar, 24, misses her father’s gentle ribbing of her husband.

But it is Kantilal’s wife Saroj who has had to bear the trauma of losing a loving husband and a devoted family man the most.

Born in a Jamnagar village in Gujarat’s Saurashtra region in 1950, Kantilal grew up in Khar playing gully cricket in the bylanes of Carter Road. He passed high school from Pupil’s High School, higher secondary from Parle College (now Sathe College) and BE (Civil) from Regional College, Surat. After a brief stint in the Public Works Department, he joined BMC as sub-engineer in 1976.

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