Namdeo Chintaman Bhagat had a dream that almost every Mumbaiite would relate to — that of having a flat of his own.

For over two decades, he persevered to realise the dream for himself and hundreds of his neighbours in Chawl No 148, Gaekwadnagar, in Malad.

Bhagat, who would have turned 60 in three days, was only a few months away from moving into a new 540-sq feet flat when a blast at Mahim in the Borivali-bound local abruptly ended it all.

“Bole the ab yehi mera kaam hoga (He had said that would be his work from now on),” says wife Sindhu (48), remembering how Namdeo planned to follow up the redevelopment of the chawl after he retired as a section engineer with the electrical department of the railways by July-end.

With Bhagat’s sudden departure, there is a sense of being left without leadership in the close-knit community.

“Unki kalam chalne se hi hum yahaan tak pahuche (It was because of him, we’ve reached this far),” says Zarina Sheikh, a social worker who lives in the same lane as the Bhagats. With neighbours Alim Malik, Suresh Gupta, and Vasant Lahane, she had gone to Mahim police station in Malik’s taxi to bring home Namdeo’s body that night.

Sheikh narrated how, over the years, Namdeo tirelessly wrote to various government agencies to improve amenities in this huge, haphazard sprawl of ground-storey structures ever since he first moved here from Vadodara in 1982 with his wife and elder daughter Deepti, then a year old.

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