At Sachin Khanna’s new residence at Kandivali, there’s a plastic cover on the nameplate. Yet, the paint on the words “Kashish Sachin Khanna” looks fresh. Inside, white cloth covers the new furniture, but can’t hide all the memories that are associated with the house, a house they could finally call their own.

“After six months, on Kashish’s insistence we opened the house again. She wants to stay here with their daughter Kanishka,” says her father, Madan Lalwani. “She wants the house exactly as her husband Sachin thought of it. Only, minor carpentry work is pending.”

Sachin Khanna had worked hard for his dream house. A sales manager with Gemini Global, a company dealing in light fixtures, he was an asset to his employers. “I still remember the Tata Consultancy Services order. We were all working hard to get it,” recalls his colleague and friend Nidhi Hinduja. “It was a big order for us, but Sachin just got it with ease. He was a genius.”

Lalwani says the company was so happy with him for having bagged the Rs 2-crore deal that his bosses actually branded the lights “esskay” to rhyme with his initials: S.K. No wonder Sachin was doing so well. In fact, Gemini had planned to send him to Bangalore for an exhibition to learn about new light designs and build fresh contacts on July 12.

But Sachin died the day before in the blast on the Khar-Bandra local while returning home. “He called me twice at 5 pm and again at 6:09 pm to tell me about his Bangalore trip. He said he would drop Kashish and Kanishka at my place. Then, suddenly the phone got disconnected,” says Lalwani who has kept the mobile phone he found on him at Bhabha Hospital.

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