Speaking about her recovery a year later, her husband Suresh Patni said, “Sita’s treatment is still underway. She still has about 30% burns left to heal.”

Aakash’s family had been rendered homeless a fortnight before the June 12 plane crash last year when they were evicted by their landlord. At that time, they had been living on the pavement opposite the road from their tea shop in the Meghaninagar area of Ahmedabad, near the UG hostels of the BJ Medical College where the plane crashed, leaving 260 killed including 19 on the ground and 241 on board.  When The Indian Express met Babi Patni near the postmortem room at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital last year, all she could say was, “Aakash was sleeping on the road when the plane fell out of the sky. Maaro kaanudo maari saame badi gayo (My grandson caught fire right in front of my eyes).”

At their home, sitting next to a ‘memorial’ of their younger son, Suresh and Sita said they never visited the crash site again. “It brings up memories too hard to bear,” she said, with tears in her eyes.  Days after the solemn commemoration of a year since the disaster that took away their son, Suresh and Sita will travel to Varanasi to immerse his ashes in the Ganga. A matki carrying Akash’s ashes, covered in a faded white cloth, still hangs from the top grill of the hall window in the family’s one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of the New Lakshminagar Society in Meghaninagar, just 200 metres from their tea stall located at the main gate of the Atulyam hostel buildings. Next to his ashes, a full-size cut out of their dear boy in a blue suit is placed, with a silver chain placed around his neck.

Speaking to The Indian Express on Thursday, Suresh, an auto rickshaw driver, said, “We had carried out Aakash’s final rites after his body was identified four days after the crash. We then completed the one-month rituals at our hometown in Patan. As per tradition, we will be holding bhajans a year after his death before travelling to Kashi (Varanasi) to immerse his ashes in the Ganga.”

Since the crash, the Patni family’s old tea stall, located at the gate of the hostel campus, has been wiped out.

What was not destroyed in the crash was moved to one side to make way for a police check post and tent for the personnel stationed there to protect the crash site during the investigation by the AAIB. After the parts of the plane were taken away, the checkpost remained for several months to keep curious onlookers away from the dangerously burnt buildings .

When The Indian Express visited the site on June 11, the family’s small wooden temple, which was kept in their tea stall, was hanging entangled in the razor wires atop the boundary wall – but there was no deity.