One always thinks of catastrophes that can happen to oneself. Some may say that this is negative thinking but I think the human mind has such tendencies which is quite normal. Some like to openly express it and some don't like to. The ones who openly express it are often misunderstood for being pessimists.
It was 3:15am and I could faintly hear the doorbell ringing endlessly. As I was trying to get out of my sweet slumber, I could also hear a constant banging on the front door. All of a sudden, I realised it was not one of my crazy senseless dreams. The sounds were very real and I jumped out of bed at the immediate realisation of the same.
Riya and I headed towards the front door. I felt some maniac was desperately trying to get into our house. We almost called out at the same time to the stranger outside, "Who is it?". The only difference between what came out of my mouth and hers was the language and the tone. I ended up blurting out in a half frantic voice, "Aara?" (which means 'Who is it?' in Malayalam). Yeah, it beats me too as to why on earth I would say that considering I live in Chennai. According to Riya, people in fear will end up blurting out anything under the sun in their mother tongue and I proved to be a perfect example of this...sigh...
I finally opened the door and saw Amar (the watchman) who quickly blabbered something (which at that time I strongly believe was the 'fear' version of some Indian language) and ran downstairs. I was stunned and was wondering what the hell was going on. I looked out of the flat confused and still in my sleepy state (this state refers to me looking like a zombie puppy with my hair in a mess). Amar came back and the moment he saw my confused look, started screaming out pointing his hand upwards, "Aag...Aag...AC par aag laga hai...." (Fire..Fire...The AC has caught fire...). Please forgive me if my recollection of the Hindi phrases is incorrect as I have very well proved earlier in this post that I was in Malayalam fear mode at the time.
A fire? Seriously, in our building? I was looking at him in disbelief until I saw Nisha coming downstairs. In fact, she appeared to come out of a black cloud of some sort (do not misunderstand that my brain works slowly, like I mentioned earlier, I was in a zombie puppy state). It took just seconds to realise that the black cloud was indeed a black cloud of smoke. Nisha came down the stairs, saw me and said, "My flat is on fire!!" That woke me up big time and I realised that everyone was rushing downstairs and Amar was desperately trying to get everyone out of the building.
I was totally not prepared for this and I came out wearing my T-shirt and short skirt (please stop all possible imagination right now). It was an unusually cold and windy night and I started to shiver a bit. (This was one moment I really wished this was just nothing but a dream....after all....shivering in Chennai???) All of us assembled outside the building and looked skyward. We were a bunch of helpless souls watching raging flames which seemed to have enough potential to likely engulf the entire terrace. My flat was just below the terrace (Gulp!). I looked around and I could see people hurriedly dialling all the possible emergency numbers. I saw a couple of people who took off their bikes to get to the nearest police checkpoint to alert them of the situation. I could see sleepy worried looks on everyone's face. I could hear gossip talks on the likely cause of the fire. The topic that disturbed most of us was the possibility of the gas cylinder inside Nisha's flat catching fire and leading to an explosion which would result in a fire that would be really difficult to control and put out.
Meanwhile, I could see Nisha pacing up and down, constantly talking over the phone. Poor thing must be really worried. We spoke to her for some time. I felt she was comparatively composed and I think was quite positive-minded that the fire would not result in a major loss. Riya and I were thinking that we were empty-handed and that the fire spread to the floor beneath. That thought left both of us uneasy. It made us realise how we take life for granted. How can we be so sure that there will definitely be a tomorrow? Are we always prepared for the worst?
Riya suggested that we should always keep a bag that has all our important stuff so that when we need to run out, we can do so by just taking that bag with us. It sounded like a practical idea but would any of us really implement it? I am sure many of us out there would think it is a crazy idea. But you wouldn't if you ended up standing outside your building at 3:30am watching the terrace on fire and wishing that you could have at least taken your purse out with you.
The fire brigade finally arrived after an hour and took more than half an hour to put out the fire. Finally, we walked upstairs to have a look at the flat only to find charred remains of the same. It was impossible to say that there was once a double bed, laptop, etc as we could not make out any of it. Nisha was standing in one corner and sobbing. She was lucky to have got out of the flat on time.
Incidents like these often prove to be a reality check. There need not be a rosy tomorrow as it takes only a few seconds for life to turn upside down. The words that were ringing in my mind for a while: "It is better to live life to the fullest than not to have lived a life at all".
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