MALEGAON (Maharashtra): Just five days ago the district education officer felicitated Sajeed Shafiq Ahmed for being one of the most promising young men of Malegaon. He had secured an admission to medical graduate course of the Jiujiang University and he was to leave for China shortly.

But on Friday, Sajeed and his cousin left home for `jumma namaz' (Friday prayer) at the Kabristan mosque. But like his Chinese university dream, even this was not to be realised. The duo was hit by the bomb that went off at Mushwarat Chowk and they had to eventually reach the kabristan (graveyard) on the shoulders of pall-bearers. Their fathers, Shafiq Ahmed and Shareef Ahmed on Saturday refused to take any ex-gratia payment from the Union Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, and demanded a better deal for Malegaon.

But terrorists who sought to destroy Malegaon by using bombs as trigger to blast off communal violence in the sensitive town found their plan not surviving the explosion. Malegaon proved not second to Mumbai in recovering from the shock and getting up to take care of the injured and to stand by the bereaved. Dr. Syed Ahmad Farhani, a general surgeon having his own private hospital not only threw it open for the injured but took his scalpel to remove splinters from about 100 of them with the help of his nephews and the staff. It was not time to crib about the sickening state of the civic hospital here.

But for a while Malegaon had its own hiccups. People thought that the security was not enough and turned their ire on the police. Many social workers and intellectuals told this correspondent that the powerloom town, known for its communal riots, was on the brink of one of them. But soon the community elders made fervent appeals for peace and amity. An all-party meeting not only made an appeal for peace but also took active measures to enforce it and provide all kinds of help.

"As we started picking up bodies for taking them to hospitals, the Hindus spontaneously joined and some had reached ahead of us with the essential medicines and other medical supplies," said Mr. Shareef Pahelwan. People from both the communities queued before blood banks to donate blood.

The Muslim community was planning to observe the solemn ceremony of offering night-long prayers for their dead in the graveyard for it was going to be Shab-e-Barat.

Malegaon has the country's one of the biggest graveyards and it is open to all Muslim sects. Malegaon had no strike call, no curfew, no riots, not even prohibitory orders on Saturday or even Friday for that matter. The blasts forged a strange kind of kinship. Most of the shops remained closed but that was a mark of respect to the dead.

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