A company secretary who never stopped learning

An avid academic, Sandeep Zawar was the diligent kind: Even while managing work, he found the need and enthusiasm to pursue a career enhancement course at ICFAI.

An avid academic, Sandeep Zawar was the diligent kind: Even while managing work, he found the need and enthusiasm to pursue a career enhancement course at ICFAI. But his life wasn’t about all work and no play. He loved driving his car.

But Sandeep’s dreams came crashing on 7/11 when he died in the train blast at Khar. Wife Pooja hasn’t yet come to terms with it. So, she and their three-year-old son have left Mumbai. “What can I say. It’s too hard for me to even think about it. You can imagine what she (Pooja) is going through,” says Kalpana, wife of Sandeep’s elder brother, Sudhir.

More than a decade ago, the Zawar family came to Mumbai from their village in Rajasthan to make a better living. They were doing fine. Sandeep as a freelance company secretary operating from his office in Malad and Sudhir employed with Siaram Textiles. Till two years ago, they lived together as one happy family — Sandeep, Pooja, their son, and Sudhir, Kalpana and their two children — at a flat in Jesal Park in Bhayander.

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“Sandeep was a very responsible and punctual person,” recalls Kalpana. May be that’s why the family began worrying early that day — they did not hear anything about Sandeep till late at night. “Even if it was a matter of getting late by 10 minutes, he would call and inform us.”

“I saw him at least twice everyday while he was going and returning from work,” says Ramesh Akhani, who owns a medicine shop, and likes to describe his friend of 10 years as a well-educated, intelligent person with a knack for solving problems. “He was a good man,” says hotel owner S K Agarwal. “Although I didn’t know him much, we used to bump into each other once in a while.’’ That day, it was Agarwal who arranged for the ambulance for Sandeep.

“That morning he called us to say he was going to meet someone at Fort,’’ Kalpana said. That was the last time she spoke to him. And when they did not hear from him till late, the family decided to begin a search. Sudhir went out with his friends and checked hospital after hospital until they traced him to Sion Hospital.

“That night, we were told he was injured,” recalls Kalpana.

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The family got to know the next day. These days, Sudhir and Kalpana seek solace by recalling the good times they spent together in that Bhayander home. The families were close. Kalpana’s four-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter were very attached to their uncle Sandeep. “The brothers were popular with everyone in the area,’’ she says.

Now, Pooja, her three-year-old son and her in-laws have gone to Rajasthan. “May be they needed a change to start afresh,’’ adds Ramesh.