Members of a housing society in Borivli are rallying around their 35-year-old neighbour, who is still reeling from the shock of losing his mother earlier this year. The man, identified as Vinayak Kapoor alias Sonu, had been living with the corpse of his septuagenarian mum Bala for several days. The grim discovery was made by his neighbours in the second week of January, when Kapoor stepped out of his fourth floor flat in search of food, and started to beg for biscuits and cold drinks from a shopkeeper in the vicinity. The neighbours, who helped cremate the body, have since been making all possible efforts to provide him medical attention and special care, while keeping the local police in the loop.

Kapoor, a resident of Moreshwar Krupa Housing Society, moved into the neighbourhood with his parents when he was five years old. While his father died eight years ago, his mother developed gangrene, and died in her home in January this year. The neighbours were unaware of this. Kapoor refused to leave her side, until starvation forced him out of the confines of his home. It was his childhood friend’s father Dnyanshwar Wade, who spotted him begging at the shop. “I could not figure out why he was begging. Something seemed amiss. I decided to check on him, and rang his doorbell,” Wade recalls.