Lucknow:
When he was 21, Abhishek Saxena left his hometown of Lucknow to follow his dreams.
He enrolled as a Mechanical Engineering Student at DY Patil College in Pune.
A friend of his remembers, ''He used to call me Bajju Bhai. 'So Bajju Bhai', he told me, 'I am thinking of becoming a testing engineer. I think it's very interesting to be one. Imagine, if I don't clear the car, then it doesn't ply on the roads.' So this was the last conversation we had."
The next time that his friend saw Abhishek, it was in a newspaper," I first looked at the photograph in the newspaper and then said to myself that this can't be him. This looks like someone else's picture.''
In the Pune blast on Saturday, Abhishek, now 24, had died. He had gone to the German Bakery with some friends. He was rushed to a local hospital. He died there on Tuesday. The 10th person to die in the terror attack that claimed 11 lives, most of them young students and professionals.
Abhishek had lost his father when he was eight. He was brought up by Nidhi, his mother, who lavished her love and attention on her only child.
''His dad died when he was very small, and he had no siblings. So he took all the responsibilities of his family on his shoulder. He wanted to do engineering, and he took math, and that was his inspiration. I think his mother wanted that, and to make his mother proud was the only thing that he wanted to do,'' shares Rahul Singh, another childhood friend.
On his Facebook page, the condolences pour in. His friends say at some point, they will print these out for Abhishek's mother.