Papa, don’t go by local train, isme bomb fatta hai,” V K Majhi’s son Rupesh pleads before him every day when he leaves for work. Majhi was driving the 5.19 pm Churchgate-Virar fast on July 11, 2006 when a powerful blast ripped apart one of its first class compartments at the Mira Road station.

“It’s not easy to forget the blasts, especially when they claimed so many innocent lives. The images of people dying in front of me still haunt me. It’s very difficult to forget the appalling sight of mindless bloodshed. Every time my younger son sees photographs of local trains, he says ‘yeh hai local train jisme bomb fatta hai,” Majhi says.

Majhi was part of an unfortunate group of seven motormen who had literally driven the city to tragedy, which left 186 dead.

Girish Chand Chaurasia was driving one of those ill-fated local—-the 5.54 pm Borivali fast that was jolted by an explosion at Mahim station.

“I could not sleep properly for days. The images of death and destruction kept haunting me. I hope that such a dreadful thing never happens in my lifetime again. But we just can’t go on working with this approach,” said Chaurasia.

Forty-seven-year-old Madhukar Surse reminisces philosophically: “I kept on thinking how could humans kill one another like that? What had happened to humanity?” Surse, who was driving the 5.30 pm Borivali fast when one of its coaches was blown up at Bandra, could not sleep for a month. “The pain of 7/11 will remain with me, always,” he said.

... contd.