Mrs. Malini Bakshi did not put her life on hold when her 50-year-old husband expired after a heart attack. She plunged into a busy schedule of uplifting her community, especially involving youngsters. Life was with her daughter and the children she taught.

She was making ‘sheera’ (a sweet) for her grandson one day and suddenly collapsed. It was a massive bleed – subdural haemorrhage. It soon became obvious that she was brain dead. As her daughter showed an inclination to donate, Mrs. Bakshi was shifted to P.D. Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai. The hospital in which she had been admitted earlier was not authorised for transplant. The daughter said that her mother had for many years expressed a desire to donate her eyes. After understanding the concept of brain death, apnoea test and the procedure the daughter agreed to donate her mother’s organs, knowing it to be an act her mother would surely approve of. Mrs.Bakshi’s kidneys, liver, eyes, and skin were donated on 18th July 2014.

On organ donors’ felicitation day, Mrs. Bakshi’s daughter said that going through her mother’s papers she found that her mother had also been thinking of body donation so that she could help in research and study. She added, “My mother had made so much ‘sheera’ that even today we all wonder why? But then, she left behind sweetness for many. In life she touched people, in death she sweetened and enlivened five families.”