Mumbai: “Asato ma sad gamaya, tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, mrityor ma amritam gamaya—lead me from untruth to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality.” The ancient Sanskrit mantra for enlightenment and peace echoed as 11-year-old Vihan Srivastav, who died when a roadside tree fell on his school bus on Chembur’s Road No 11, began his final journey.With the grieving family’s friends and relatives gathered around them, the outrage over the lack of administrative accountability for such fatal tree collapses was palpable.As the funeral procession made its way from the family’s residence at Kukreja Heights to the waiting ambulance, Vihan’s father, an engineer with UltraTech Cement, led the gathering with stoicism while the cries of his mother and other relatives and neighbours rang through the residential society.Before the funeral, Vihan’s inconsolable mother, Juhi Srivastav, had sat silently at home, clutching her son’s cricket bat while relatives and neighbours gathered around her, her silence reflecting a loss too profound for words.At the Deonar Pada crematorium, moments before the pyre was lit, family members placed a cricket ball beside Vihan’s body—a final farewell to a child who, according to his grandfather, S. N. Srivastav, “loved cricket”.“I had bought him a bat and ball. He was a big foodie as well,” said Srivastav, an advocate from Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh, adding tearfully but with pride, “he could recite the Hanuman Chalisa word for word, completely by heart.” Srivastav said he plans to file a complaint over the incident. “I will submit a complaint, but somebody has to take it up and ensure action is taken,” he said.“Our child cannot come back,” said Anil Srivastav, Vihan’s granduncle and a retired additional secretary of the Lok Sabha who flew in from Delhi. “No amount of compensation is enough. Our boy, the only child of his parents, is gone. Before every monsoon, funds are allocated for civic works. They should be properly utilised. Something has to be done about dangerous trees and open manholes so that no more families have to suffer what we are going through.”Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Anil Desai, who visited the family, said complaints about hazardous trees and civic infrastructure “must be taken seriously and attended to”. “It is criminal if complaints are lodged but no action is taken. Trees along roads must be maintained and looked after regularly,” he said. “It’s absolutely shameful. They call Mumbai an international city and this is what it does to citizens.”Also present at the funeral was local MLA Tukaram Kate who said an FIR must be registered against those responsible and accountability fixed. “What has happened is extremely unfortunate. The authorities have a responsibility to provide basic public safety. Watching the helpless parents is heartbreaking,” he said.Finally, as smoke from the funeral pyre rose into the grey sky, an overhead exhaust system drew much of it away, leaving behind only the damp scent of the monsoon. The family stood huddled together as relatives and neighbours streamed past to pay their final respects.Neighbour Vinod Malhotra recalled meeting Vihan just days before the accident. “I asked him how old he was and he smiled and said, ‘Eleven.’ I told him, ‘You’ve grown so tall.’ I was surprised how much he had grown in such a short time. He was such a kind and lovely boy,” he said.
