Title - Twin tragedies on track, 22 yrs apart

Kanun Patra lost her husband on a rail track 22 years ago but didn't let it break her spirit because she had three kids to raise. Tragedy revisited her on a rail track last Thursday, this time snatching the young son who had grown up to become her backbone. Mrinal Kanti Patra, a postgraduate student of mechanical engineering at Jadavpur University, would travel over four hours to and from his village in Singur every day. On Thursday, Mrinal was trying to climb a moving train at Jadavpur station when he slipped, fell on the track and was run over. "He had called me at 4pm after his classes got over. Forty-five minutes later, a call from the Government Railway Police dragged me back two decades," 52-year-old Kanun told Metro, her tears refusing to stop. Kanun's family isn't the only one feeling the pain. Mamutpur South village, not far from the abandoned Tata project in Singur that wasn't to be, is also in mourning. Mrinal was only the second engineering graduate from the village. "Not only us, the entire village was proud of him," said sister Shukla Santra, who teaches English at a government-aided school. Elder brother Kunal is a police constable. Kunal was 12, Mrinal 10 and Shukla barely six when their father Rabindranath died in 1990, run over by a train at an unmanned level crossing at Mirzapur Bankipore station while returning from work in Singur. Till Madhyamik, Mrinal would regularly toil in the fields to help his mother manage without his father's income as a National Volunteer Force member. "We had about eight cottahs of farmland and Mrinal would work there before and after school," his sister said. Amid the struggle, what kept Mrinal going was his ambition to become an engineer and his mother's confidence in his ability. "He would often say that our condition would become better once he got a job. He wanted to study, he was good at science. I sold my jewellery and property so that he could continue his studies. I also took loans from relatives," Kanun recalled. So cash-strapped was the family that there were days when Kanun needed to borrow rice from neighbours to feed her children. But after three years of studying electronics and telecommunications engineering at IIT Kanpur, Mrinal fell short in attendance and could not sit for a semester exam. He came back home, cleared the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination and started from scratch at Haldia Institute of Technology. After graduating, Mrinal cleared the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering to do his postgraduation in mechanical engineering at Jadavpur University. "He was getting a monthly stipend of Rs 10,000. We insisted that he stay in Calcutta but he decided against it. He wanted to save the mess fees and other expenses so that he could contribute most of his stipend to our family income," said sister Shukla. An education loan of Rs 3 lakh that Mrinal had taken is one of the burdens that the family now has to shoulder without his support. Brother Kunal was to have got married next month and Mrinal was looking forward to it. On Thursday, he was in a hurry to return home to check some masonry work that his mother wanted done ahead of the wedding. "I have heard he told his friends that he would be delayed by two hours if he missed the train that he tried taking….Now I will be missing him for the rest of my life," Kanun said, breaking down again.