Usha Shaw is cursing herself for not having held on tightly to the hands of her 11-year-old daughter, Shweta.

“Her fingers slipped from my grip while the rescue operation was on in the Lower Bagjola Canal. Wish I had held on to her more tightly,” sobs the 28-year-old mother, consoled by neighbours at her Jhowtala Road flat, in Teghoria.

Usha was returning home with her daughter on bus 217B when it took the fatal plunge into the VIP Road canal. She suffered minor injuries in the hand and neck and has been released from hospital.

Usha is yet to break the tragic news of Shweta to her six-year-old Aryan, who is still waiting for didi to return from school and play with him.

Husband Rakesh is as devastated as Usha, but is preparing himself to take the blow in his stride.

“We are praying for the strength to get on with life for the sake of Aryan... Neighbours are feeding him, we haven’t cooked since the mishap on Friday,” says Rakesh.

The Shaws are bound by grief with the Das family of Beleghata, which has lost its youngest member, five-year-old Subhankar Das, or Subho.

Mother Runu, who was accompanying her son on the fatal ride, is in a Baguiati nursing home. She has suffered a crack in her left elbow.

In an advanced stage of pregnancy, Runu was told of her son’s death only on Sunday evening. “How could this happen to me?” cried the 23-year-old homemaker, when husband Deepak broke the news.

“The family may have done the right thing by telling her the truth. She must have been bracing herself for the worst over the past 48 hours,” said Sunil Thakur, the director of the nursing home where Runu is admitted.

The Mondols of Atghara, in Baguiati, still have no clue how to tell Marjina Bibi that her daughters Neha, 8, and Hena, nine months, are no more.

“She is under the impression that they are recovering in hospital,” said husband Habibul Mondol. “My father, too, does not know about the death of my mother and daughters in the accident.”

“How is Neha? Somebody told me that she is being treated in a hospital nearby. Can I visit her?” cried Marjina, who is being treated for a head injury in a nursing home.