From the office boy whose MBA dream was cut short to the dying father who scrawled his son’s name in blood to the man who couldn’t make it to his friend’s funeral, The Indian Express has been tracking 187 families who lost their near ones in the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts. Grandfathers, fathers, sons, brothers, daughters and wives, all who had made Mumbai their home.

Hemlata Yadav’s was the first story in our ongoing series of 187 Mumbai Life Stories. The series resumes tomorrow. Nineteen-year-old, she dropped out of college in May 2005 and became a Home Guard to help pay for the education of her younger brother Yogesh, now in Class III. Hemlata was killed while on duty at the Borivali station when a bomb exploded at 6.35 pm, July 11.

Their stories of courage and hope have touched all, especially our readers. Like Snehal Desai of Ahmedabad. He was one of the first to call and tell us of his intention to fund the education of Hemlata’s brother Yogesh. Eventually, a number of his friends and colleagues joined in to collect around Rs 51,000 which is now helping the Yadavs pay Yogesh’s monthly school fees.

There have been many more. Like Rajesh Kumar from Chandigarh, Rohit Kansal from Jammu, Tirath Ram Julka from New Delhi, Suresh Yadav from Gurgaon, the Gadkari family from Bangalore, Ramesh Kumtea from Hyderabad and Deepak and Reshma Ajinkya from Melbourne, Australia and a huge number of generous donors from Mumbai and Maharashtra. They are among a thousand readers from across India who have contributed — more donations are pouring in — to the Indian Express’s My Mumbai Trust which has so far collected about Rs 28 lakh that will be used to help needy families of the dead.

In the end, not everything is about money though. A kind word or a gesture is welcome just as much. NRI Kiran Desai showed the way. Reading story No. 3 he was moved to realise that Rajan Naik’s untimely death on Terrible Tuesday meant he left behind, among several other things, an unfulfilled promise to his 8-year-old son Bittu. Bittu always wanted a bike “like the one Hrithik Roshan had in Koi Mil Gaya”. So, Kiran Desai sent us a mail from the US: “I read your story about Rajan and Sandhya Naik. I would like to buy Bittu the bike his Dad promised him.” And within a week, Bittu got a package — facilitated by Kiran Desai’s Mumbai friend Nishith Mehta — which had the bike and gaming CDs and miniature cars. “I never expected such help from absolute strangers,” said Bittu’s mother, Sandhya Naik.

What is it that makes people give? For Snehal Desai it was perhaps about the story of Hemlata. Not a terror statistic, but a lifestory of a 19-year-old girl who did not let her personal hopes and ambitions come in the way of her sense of duty towards her family.

For Snehal Desai, Greg Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea”, an account of the American’s efforts to construct 51 girls’ schools in the Afghan-Pakistan border villages, was an inspiration: “If Mortenson can construct 51 schools, why can’t we take care of a boy’s education?” The money collected by Desai and his friends has been deposited in an account of the local Shramik Sahakari Bank and will be operated by Yogesh’s elder sister Sona 22, also a Home Guard. Monthly payments will be made to Yogesh’s school. At the St Mary’s School in the heart of a slum in suburban Jogeshwari, Yogesh and the over 1,000 others like him are mostly from low income families like the Yadavs, who pin their hopes on an English-medium education to open doors to a better future.

“Hemlata and I could only afford the civic Gujarati school,” says Sona. “And we were very keen that Yogesh must not go through the same. If he studies well here, he won’t face the obstacles that we are facing now.” Both sisters, who dropped out of college to become Home Guards, would hand over their salaries — under Rs 3,000 — at the end of each month to father Yadunath, an office help earning Rs 2,500. Now, the family is grateful for Snehal’s help. “Nobody at home knows English, and I just enrolled Yogesh for tuitions so that he doesn’t fall back in studies,” says Yadunath. “It costs Rs 275 a month. To know that the school expenses will be taken care of is a relief.”