What Happened

It’s almost two and a half years back, December 27, 2015, on a fine morning I was looking through the newspaper and shocked when I saw a nearby locality, hardly 20 min walk from my home, was burned out and devastated. There were not many details in the newspaper, as the accident happened at midnight and they didn’t get full cover at that time.

I took my camera mounted with a 50mm lens, boarded on a rickshaw, and reached the spot. When I reached over there, at around 8:30 or 9:00 am, I saw a lot of photojournalists were already there, documenting for their agency, newspaper, or whatever and people thought of me as another photojournalist. Nevertheless, that worked well for me.

What I witnessed you can have a glimpse of that in my photographs posted here, but the stories I listened from them broke my heart and left an enduring effect in my mind, indeed a lesson learned for my whole life.

Sad Stories

One young guy of age around 24 or 25 was saying to me that he traded his bicycle and watch to get a used iPhone 5. He kept that in his home, and it burned out a day after he purchased it. Women were talking about their jewelry and wedding clothes kept with care since they got married, and many other treasured items that are gone. The value of those are not just linked with money, but the memory, lifelong association, and companionship.

Good that no one died or seriously injured, whereas there was a very high probability considering the type of accident and its severity. No one knew what exactly happened, how it happened. But it was suspected that the fire was initiated by a blast of a gas cylinder. Thereafter, other gas cylinders also blasted one after another due to the heat. Local people immediately threw the rest of the gas cylinders into the nearby canal. But it was already too late, as the burning took place very fast. All finished within 5 or 6 minutes.

No one knew what exactly happened, how it happened. But it was suspected that it was initiated by a blast of a gas cylinder. Thereafter, other gas cylinders also blasted one after another due to the heat. Local people immediately threw the rest of the gas cylinders into the nearby canal.

Realization

I realized on the day that nothing is permanent in life, an accident can happen at any time. It’s important to insure your family and keep valuable things in a safe place. Even if you take good safety precautions, unfortunate things still can happen. Aftermath is a heartbroken story. It teaches us the fragility of life, and valuable and important things can go away momentarily.

I realized on the day that nothing is permanent in life, an accident can happen at any time. It’s important to insure for your family and keep valuable things in a safe place.

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” – Grace Hopper.

Fire does not burn down only the homes, it burns memories, hopes, dreams, and time well spend in there. Even after that, I think life will be back again in track as it was before; women will use gas cylinders again as they used it before, whatever gone will not return, true, but empty places will slowly fill up again. Life goes on and on…