For 32-year-old Virendra Potdar, life is not the same these days; instead of coaching young cricketers at Shivaji Park in Dadar, he is spending his days on his bed at home, taking physiotherapy sessions and popping pills. Potdar is a classic case of essential hypertension (without cause) and needed a life-saving brain surgery last year to remove a large haemorrhagic blood clot in the right side of his brain, causing temporary weakness on his left side of the body and a weak bladder.

Potdar is among the many young people, for whom hypertension has become a major concern recently, particularly because of poor lifestyle, said the doctors. The number of people consulting doctors with complains of high blood pressure has also increased, they added. Potdar, a resident of Kohinoor Mill Compound in Dadar East, was a coach at Kamath Memorial Cricket Academy and umpired cricket matches. On the fateful evening, in the first week of December, he went to Andheri to collect his fee for umpiring a cricket tournament and went to pick up a friend, Rohini R, 30, who was also in Andheri for work.