‘They were inseparable’: family’s anguish at wait to bring Air India victims home

Pooja’s mother, Chandra Mate, holds one of the couple’s wedding photos. Pooja would call her mother multiple times a day from the UK. Photograph: Hannah Ellis-Petersen

In the ramshackle, cramped lanes of Ambika Nagar in the Indian city of Gujarat, everyone spoke of Pooja and Harshit Patel with pride. The couple had done what none of their relatives or neighbours had managed to achieve before; they had moved abroad, settling among the thriving Gujarati diaspora community in the English city of Leicester.

Their lives in Leicester, where the couple had moved so Pooja could complete her business masters degree – later getting a job at Amazon alongside Harshit – seemed unimaginably glamorous to their relatives and close-knit community back in India.