TEenN-year-old Kaisar is waiting to read this story. About his grandfather. So here goes:

Shakir Husain Abdeali Merchant worshipped work and harboured only one wish: to be able to continue working until his last breath. Ever since he retired as the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in 1994, he was practising law in Mumbai courts. He did so — until 7/11, when he died in the Jogeshwari train blast.

Wife of 41 years, Rehana, calls him the ‘‘gentleman husband’’ while daughter Naseem and son Zulfikar don’t remember a single day when he raised his voice. Fellow magistrates or colleagues in the Bar share similar attributes about him: disciplined, methodical and straight-forward.

‘‘Often, he would tell me how people complimented him on his good health and said he looked younger than his age,’’ says Rehana at their apartment in Borivali near Eksar Lake. Today, more than six months after his death, the family still can’t come to terms with the painful truth that he is no more.

These days they tend to spend more time as a family, at times comforting each other and reliving some of their best memories of Shakir. One comfort has been The Indian Express series, ‘‘187 Mumbai Life Stories’’, to try and gather strength by learning about the ways others are confronting their pain.

‘‘It is through these Mumbai Life Stories that we realised there are so many families whose plight is worse than ours,’’ says Rehana who has meticulously kept clips of each article.

... contd.