Pinaki Mukhopadhyay arrived in Mumbai in 1984, posted in the city by his PSU employer, the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI). On July 11 he was taking a familiar train back from Churchgate to his home in suburban Kandivali, trying to reach in time to accompany wife Kalyani to visit their local mall.

“My last conversation with him was at 4.30 pm, asking him to leave office as soon as he could, and try to accompany me to shop at D-Mart in the evening,” says his wife of 19 years.

The housewife, in her mid-40s, recalls the day that began for Pinaki like any other: dropping his school-going daughters Prerana (15) and Dwitiya (10) off at the bus-stop, reading the newspaper at the breakfast table, and heading off — “surprisingly grudgingly”, she recalls — to take the local train to his office in South Mumbai’s business district of Nariman Point.

Next morning, family friends traced the burly mechanical engineer’s body to Bhabha Hospital. Pinaki had been killed in the 6.24 pm blast at Bandra station. While they found his cellphone and purse with him, his chain and ring were missing. Pinaki, who was from Kolkata and had studied in the prestigious Bengal Engineering College, started work in the merchant navy before joining SCI as a young engineer and moving to Mumbai.

He asked to be transferred to Kolkata in 2000, but soon moved back to Mumbai since his children missed life here. Kalyani recalls the dreams Pinaki had for his daughters of becoming doctors: “Prerna is more like Pinaki, quiet and studious. Pinaki was very keen that she should study medicine and she will try for that. But Prerna also loves gadgets, and could teach her father a few things. She is keen on studying engineering like Pinaki.”

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