He lost his wife, Raipur sandwiches lost special zing

Jagdish Kadia, who is 56 years old now, still remembers how his late wife, Hasumati, came to his rescue 18 years back when he became jobless after the mill he worked in closed down. She taught him how to make vegetable sandwiches.

The husband and wife team began selling sandwiches on a cart in Raipur area of Ahmedabad city. The sandwiches soon became famous for their unique taste, so much so that Jagdish came to be known in Raipur as Jagdish Sandwichwala.

Jagdish has sold vegetable sandwiches at the same spot in Raipur for the last 18 years and his special snack still tastes as wonderful, but life took an ugly turn for him last year.
His wife, whom he fondly called Rajaram, was killed in the serial blasts that rocked the city on July 26, 2008. By a strange coincidence, Hasumati died sitting on the same cart on which she and her husband had sold sandwiches for the last 17 years.

“I will never forget the day Rajaram died,” Jagdish said, talking about his late wife. “She had come to the cart at 5 pm that day to lend me a helping hand, as she had done every day of the year for the last so many years.”

He said they had got busy attending to customers when there was a loud blast behind the house beside which their cart stood. “I ran in the direction of the blast as I was suddenly very worried,” he said. “Rajaram could not come with me because she was slightly overweight and wanted to stay back on the cart.”

Jagdish ran off to find out whether anyone was hurt but just five minutes after the first blast, there was another explosion. This time a cycle bomb had exploded somewhere near his cart.

“I ran back to my cart only to find my wife drenched in blood and seriously injured,” Jagdish said. “We took her to VS Hospital where she fought to stay alive while the doctors treated her injuries. But she died after eight days in the hospital.”

Jagdish says nothing can compensate him for the death of his wife. “She was always a source of strength to me,” he said.  He said they had named their cart, ‘Trupti Sandwich’, in memory of their daughter who had died while still a minor. His other daughter, Shweta, who got married six months back, said her mother wanted to celebrate her marriage with a lot of pomp. “She wanted to celebrate my marriage in a grand manner because I’m the only child of my parents,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “But she did not live to see me get married.”