MUMBAI BLASTS
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Train friends who won't come back
Published on Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 12:24, Updated on Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 13:37 in India section
Tags: Mumbai Blasts, Trains , Mumbai
Mumbai: Every weekday, heading into work and then coming back home, Ashok Shah met up with his diamond-merchant friends: same train stations, same cars, same times.
They talked business - prices and shipments, carats and quality - and chatted about family as they rode the city's clattering rail network.
This week's train bombings, which killed nearly 200 people and left more than 700 wounded, ended that tradition for some - sending Shah to a hospital, killing two of his friends, and ripping apart dozens of groups of train friendships.
"It's one big train family," said Mayur Shah, Ashok's brother-in-law, waiting for him to regain consciousness after surgery on both his arms in a hospital.
"We travel at a fixed time on a fixed train so we keep friendships for years."
"Train friends," as people call them here, are a Mumbai tradition and a part of workday life for thousands of men and women.
Some groups play cards, some sing songs. Others, like Shah and his diamond-trader friends, mainly talk shop.
Each morning, they jump onto their trains at various suburban stations, flinging bags, lunch boxes, or even legs over the benches to save space for friends in the packed train cars, before spilling out in downtown Mumbai.
Each evening, the trip is reversed.
"Business is their bond. They talked work. But these men also shared their happiness and sorrow,'' and often met outside of the trains as well, said former deputy mayor Dilip Patel, who has spent much of his time since the blasts attending the cremations of victims.
Of Ashok Shah's group of friends, two are dead and another has been hospitalised with burn injuries. Shah himself is in another hospital recovering from orthopedic surgery as doctors try to save his badly injured arms, both of which remain at risk of being amputated.
"Ashok knows what happened to his friends. He wants to keep tabs on what is happening," said Mayur, who traveled with his own friends on a later train, so missed the blast.
Train service across the city was shut down for hours after the series of carefully coordinated blasts split open first-class train cars at the height of Tuesday's evening rush hour. Police suspect the bombs were placed in overhead luggage racks.
On Thursday night, authorities named two suspects in the blast - and released photographs of the two young bearded men - but released no other information about them.
A couple of professional communities appear to have suffered badly.
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