Jeweller Dilip Soni sent his 21-yr-old to Zaveri Bazaar on Wednesday to run an errand; the bereaved father now repents his decision every moment
Jeweller Dilip Soni sent his 21-yr-old to Zaveri Bazaar on Wednesday to run an errand; the bereaved father now repents his decision every moment
The red motorbike that belonged to Pankaj Soni is lying on the footpath opposite his house in Grant Road, unused for the last three days.
Every visitor that comes to the Soni residence to meet the family goes to the bike as Pankaj's father, Dilip, recounts how the 21-year-old enjoyed riding the bike to college and used to take care of it more than anything else.
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Dilip, who owns a jewellery shop in Grant Road, said that he gifted the bike to Pankaj more than a year back.
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"He had been eager to get a bike. Last Wednesday, I had asked him to go to Zaveri Bazaar, along with Rs 90,000 in cash and gold, to deliver at one of the shops.
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He had told me that he would come as soon as the work was done. But he did not return. The only thing that came back home was his bike," he said.
Dilip continued, "Since it was drizzling when he left home, I told him to ride slowly and take shelter in case it started pouring heavily. I wish it had rained heavily that day. He would have been alive.
At around 7.45 pm, we got a call. The person on the other end of the line told us that Pankaj had been injured in the blast and had been taken to a hospital.
Thinking that I must have misheard, I called up my son. After over a 100 tries, we still got the same pre-recorded massage: 'the number you are trying to call is not reachable'."
"We rushed to the hospital immediately, only to learn that Pankaj was no more. He was brought dead to the hospital."
Panakaj, a second-year B Com student at BJPC in Charni Road, was engaged to a girl from Rajasthan. He was to be married in two months.
After the tragedy that took Pankaj away from his loved ones, the family is in a state of shock. They cannot grasp what went wrong.
A relative, who visited them in Mumbai after hearing the news, said, "Pankaj was a boy who respected his parents and elders.
Extremely soft spoken, he was always ready to help people in distress. Ironically, he often wondered aloud why terrorists kill innocent, faultless people."
His parents were inconsolable. "He wanted to do an MBA. He'd tell us he would study for the entrance exam to get into a decent college." The bombing cut his dreams short. His mother Lalita Devi is torn apart. She couldn't get herself to speak.
A worker from Dilip's shop said, "He'd go to college and help his father in the business as well. That day, his father had sent him for some work. Now, he is repenting unforgivingly."
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