He left early to celebrate birthday, landed in hospital

July 13, 2006 at 3:42 pm | In mumbai blasts | 1 Comment

Pravin Verma will never forget his 35th birthday. A designer in a Dadar-based advertising agency, Verma usually never got home until late at night. But on Tuesday since it was his birthday, he decided to leave early and boarded the first-class compartment of the local that blew up at Mahim.
Verma is now among those injured—with severe injuries on his right hand and a badly bruised face.
“I was talking to my wife on the cellphone just a little while before the blast. I was standing near the door of the train when I felt something hit me from behind. I fell unconscious and when I regained consciousness, I found myself lying on the platform at Mahim station,’’ said Verma from his bed in KEM Hospital.
He remembers seeing billowing smoke and mangled, bloody bodies from the platform and then being carried into a yellow Johnson and Johnson tempo.
“There was a havaldar who got all the cargo removed from the tempo to make place for the injured,’’ said Verma.
He managed to call his office who in turn called his family informing them of his whereabouts.