Bomb blast victims

While Cyrus Jehangir Munshi’s demise in the Bombay bomb blasts of July 11, 2006 resulted in individuals and institutions raising funds for the bereaved family, funds solicited on behalf of Dara B. Shroff who survived the attack resulted in the family issuing a clarification that his company (Eureka Forbes) was paying the medical bills and therefore they were not in need of money.

Thirty-six-year-old Shroff was returning home from his office at Matunga when he was grievously injured in the train bomb blast between Khar and Santacruz station and carried to the V. N. Desai Hospital. When his parents finally located him he was shifted to the B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital where Dr Farokh Udwadia and his team of specialists treated him for burns and multiple injuries resulting from shrapnel entering his body, according to a write-up in the Jam-e-Jamshed of July 23, 2006.

Dara Shroff: survivor

The Munshi family did not only lose their loved one, they also lost their sole earning member. Thirty-one-year-old Munshi, a computer engineer, was returning by train from his first day of work at the Parekh Marine Group and Freight Systems office at Ballard Estate to his residence at Vasai when the explosion at Matunga took his life. He is survived by his wife Farzin, son Jezaan, widowed mother and younger sister. Originally from Navsari, Cyrus’s funeral was at Bombay’s Doongerwadi and the uthamna prayers at Navsari’s Malesar Behdin Anjumanni Agiary, as noted the Jamé of July 30. Donations in the name of Farzin Munshi may be sent to Banoo Damania, B/101, Serene P. Jeejeebhoy Building, Bhabola Chulna Road, Near Suyog Nagar, Vasai (W), District Thana, 401202, tel: 95250-2384827.

Orthodontist Dr Navroze Kotwal’s passion for writing Urdu ghazals was referred to in the Afternoon Despatch and Courier of July 17 where he has poetically expressed his views on the bomb blasts. One of his lines questions: "Insaan né kyon mita diya insaaniyat ka naam (Why has humanitarianism been wiped out by mankind)?”