‘How do we start life all over again?’

{ ONE MONTH ON

- Hemani Bhandari, Jignasa Sinha and Ridhima Gupta

On November 10, a bomb exploded in a car on an arterial road near the Red Fort, leaving families shattered. From migrant workers and daily wagers to young professionals, each story of the 11 victims reveals the human cost of the attack - trauma, sorrow and a long wait for compensation and justice.

'Papa photo ho gaye'

1. AMAR KATARIA, 33

A month on, the silence inside the Kataria home feels as heavy as on the day of the blast. The grief is pervasive, in the way Amar Kataria's wife, Kriti, clutches his cellphone as if it were a lifeline, to how their three-year-old son points to his father's photograph and says, “Papa photo ho gaye hain.”

Kriti, 32, barely sleeps, her father-in-law says. The phone - one of Amar’s two devices retrieved after the blast - rarely leaves her hand. She has tried to occupy her days with online tutoring, but that is only fleeting distraction. Their son, Viaan, will now know his father through photographs.

For Amar’s father, Jagdish, the loss is a blow that goes beyond the emotional. At 33, Amar had built a thriving wholesale medicines business, allowing Jagdish, a tailor in Mayur Vihar, to slow down and imagine a future where his son carried the family name and legacy forward.

The family was told a ₹10-lakh compensation cheque would arrive from the sub-divisional magistrate’s office. It hasn't. Each day it doesn’t come, it adds to their anxiety -- about the funeral bills, the rent, and the long road ahead for a widow raising a young child alone.

Lost belongings, memories

2. VINAY PATHAK, 52

They are still waiting for his belongings. A month after the blast, the family of 52-year-old Vinay Pathak say they have not been handed a single one of the sacred objects he wore into surgery ~a gold chain with a Hanuman locket, a Rudraksh rosary, his janeyu. For his elder son, 32-year-old Anish, these are no longer mere possessions. They are irreplaceable memories of his father.