Unaware of real birthday, he will mark 13/7 as day of ‘rebirth’

Bhayandar resident, Sahadev Bhuwad, 56, would often shrug off his children’s queries about when they should celebrate his birthday. Menaka Rao reports.

Bhayandar resident, Sahadev Bhuwad, 56, would often shrug off his children’s queries about when they should celebrate his birthday.

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Bhuwad, who grew up in a hamlet in Raigad, has studied only up to Std III, does not have a birth certificate and thus does not know his date of birth. Now, on the insistence of his family, he will celebrate his ‘rebirth’ today, a year after a bomb at Opera House ripped off his right leg.

“Since he never celebrates his birthday, we will celebrate his ‘rebirth’ on July 13 every year. My mother will make kheer to celebrate the occasion,” said his son Tushar, adding that his father had started talking about the incident a lot more in the past few weeks.

“He wasn’t sleeping well thinking about the incident, and would talk about it every now and then. We wanted to cheer him up,” said Tushar.

On Thursday, Bhuwad paid a visit to OttoBock HealthCare Centre, which manufactures prosthesis (a device that substitutes for a missing part of the body), for a follow up. “Of the others who have been injured in the blast, Bhuwad seems to be walking the most. His muscles are developed,” said Roshan Parekh, who works as a prosthesis engineer at the centre.

Bhuwad said that he steps out and meets friends. “I try to walk as much as I can. I even go all the way to Charni Road to meet people. I cannot sit at home,” he said.

Bhuwad’s friends from Harkisondas Hospital—Pintoo Yadav, 25, who worked with a hawker at Opera House, and Namdeo Ghulap, 36—have also been fitted with prosthesis from OttoBock. The Taj Public Welfare Trust funded the rehabilitation.

Bhuwad took up many odd jobs including selling vegetables on the road to earn a living till he got a job with a diamond broker at Opera House. Dissatisfied with the pay, a few years ago, he started working on his own as a sub-broker at Opera House.