Amid the scene unfolding outside the window of their balcony-turned-bedroom, personal tragedy was the last thing on the Shaikhs’ minds. For, the family of Mohammed Javed Shaikh (52) lives in congested Naupada, Bandra (East) with one end of their tiny home overlooking the railway tracks. And, at 6.24 pm on July 11, the womenfolk of this household watched in shock as mangled bodies and grievously injured commuters were carried away after a train compartment blew up just outside Bandra station.

At 11.30 pm, after a tension-fraught evening, Zaki Shaikh (25) discovered that his father was lying dead in the morgue at Sion Hospital. He had been claimed by the blast at Matunga Road station.

A senior section engineer (mechanical department) with Central Railway, Javed had nearly a decade of service left. “His namaaz and his work, he was always so disciplined about both,” says Shaida, his wife.

Belonging to Allahabad, the Shaikhs were in Jabalpur until his transfer 10 years ago. Posted at Katni junction--this little town in Madhya Pradesh boasts of Indian Railways’ biggest wagon repair centre, biggest diesel loco-shed and a large electric loco-shed--the Shaikhs had lived in a township along with thousands of other railway employees. The atmosphere was always cosmopolitan.

“We may be Mohammedans,” Shaida says, “but he was friendly with everybody, never fought with anybody, and definitely never on the basis of religion. Ask anyone in this chawl or at his workplace.”

His colleague Vijay Takrane, also a senior section engineer at Central Railway, remembers him as a simple man, ready to mingle with all kinds of people. He remembers an incident over a decade ago when they were both posted at Katni. “A poisonous snake bit his wife,” Takrane remembers, and the antidote was not available anywhere nearby. The duo went from village to village, desperately asking at every medical store. They finally returned with the injection and Shaida’s life was saved, but it’s Shaikh’s will to succeed that Takrane remembers. “He never lost his composure and courage,” he says.

... contd.