When a blast ripped apart a happy family

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The sharp stench of putrid drains fills the air outside homes literally stacked one on top of the other in Tarun Vikas Mandal chawl on Golibar road in Ghatkopar (West).

Chikane is a common surname here and it takes a few enquiries, a disruption of a cricket match, numerous turns around winding lanes past drying clothes and muddy puddles to reach the less than 100 square feet landing of Arvind Arjun Chikane that reeks of kerosene.

Beneath a clothes' line weighed down by red and yellow sarees, sits a family of five. This crowded, dimly lit room was once the abode of a sixth family member, Arvind Chikane, who didn't live to see the day after July 11, 2006.

As soon as Arvind's name is mentioned, 28-year-old Pundulik Chikane's face lights up. "You know, people used to be amazed with Arvind sending home money within a few months of reaching the city," he says excitedly. "Barkhya was a graduate you know," continues Arvind's elder brother. Incidentally, Arvind's B.A. from Sunderrao More College of Arts and Commerce in the village of Poladpur in Raigad district is a first in the Chikane family and naturally a cause for great pride and joy.

Arvind was one among the many youths in his village who used to help his mother at their farm in the village. By this time, last year, he had packed his bags and made his way to the city to generate that extra income for his family of three brothers, their extended family and his widowed mother. Armed with a bachelor's degree, the five feet five inches, timid-looking Arvind Chikane, who according to his brother fell short of "just two inches of the army's entry requirement", got inducted at a jewellery design shop in Jogeshwari in Mumbai.

Soon enough, Arvind began to earn a salary of Rs2500 per month, leaving home at nine in the morning and returning at 8.00 in the night; his two elder brothers, one who worked as a porter in the railways and the other as a driver, brought home around Rs4000 each every month. In short, life was slipping into a comfortable monotony for the Chikanes in Mumbai.

But this unshaken simplicity was jolted on the evening seven blasts ripped the first class and adjoining compartments on the Western line in Mumbai. A few moments upon boarding the train, Arvind's slight frame was racked by a blast in Jogeshwari. He had died on the spot.

When the youngest of the Chikane brothers didn't turn up by eight that evening, the family started panicking, reveals Pundulik Chikane. Since all phone lines had been closed, it was not until half past ten when the family learnt of Arvind's death, who had been declared dead on arrival at the Cooper hospital. Back at his village, where Arvind was a star cricketer, news of his death reached his ageing mother, when neighbours saw his picture appear on television.

Today, the Chikane household has received the Rs500,000 compensation and another Rs400,000 insurance due from the railway tribunal. But these funds haven't been of much use. "We can't touch the Rs500,000, which is under my mother's name as of now. Besides, the Rs400,000 has been put in the bank as fixed deposit," Pundulik explains, insisting that his family doesn't seek any more help from the government. "Whatever was due has been received by us. There can be nothing else that we could be entitled to", he says with surety.

But his resilience fails him everyday, he says, when he passes by the Jogeshwari station, where he lost his barkhya, his younger brother to the grim Mumbai train blasts.