Delhi- A Day After...

Simran hasn’t stopped wailing since Saturday evening. ‘‘I want papa. Where is mamma? I promise to be a good girl,’’ cries the five-year-old. Simran’s father Ashok (32), grandfather Harishchandra (65) and aunt Saroj (35) died in the blast at Gaffar Market. Her mother, Kamleshwati, sustained grievous leg injuries, but has returned to ‘‘meet my husband one last time’’. ‘‘I don’t care whether I see another day. But I want to see my husband once before they take him away forever,’’ she says

It was the chaos of the day after and the worst hit were the city’s poor and illiterate, who in absence of a coordinated information dispensation mechanism ended up making painstaking rounds of hospitals and mortuaries, unaware of the fate of their loved ones, clutching photographs in the hope that somebody will recognise the person and give them the good news they were dying to hear.