Payal Sharma
2 min readJun 10, 2021

Fire ! Fire! Fire!

This was in 2008 May .. 13 years age . I was in Kolkata with my parents at our Neel kamal home . My sister had visited us from Mumbai with her 4 years old daughter. My bhabhi went to Nagpur with Malvika and Lavanya . Amit was in Delhi . So 5 of us were in the house. Our Raju Chachaji visited to meet papa. Our servant Shankar was in the kitchen cooking. He came and said it is getting very hot in kitchen. He could hear lot of noise . People were shouting fire 🔥.. fire 🔥. He looked down from our utility. What a site .. he could only see smoke coming up . By that time the noise had become louder and closer .

We opened out main gate and saw people rushing up and down. We came to know there is fire in first floor. It was my friends house. They were not at home and Air conditioner had bursted . The fire and spread in there full house . As no one was at home it could not be controlled and started to spread.

Everyone was asked to leave the house . Power went off . We just took keys and phone and left the house. It was around 8 in the evening. We were in our corridor.. it was pitch dark . We could not make out any thing. Smoke was fuming. We could not breath . As we were on the 8 th floor. Going down was impossible. Only place was terrace. But it was locked. We were going turn by turn near a small opening in the corridor to get fresh air . We were going breathless.

What was going in my mind that time ?? My parents had plans to go for movie but my chachaji came so they cancelled the plan . If they went me, my sister and Ananya would only be at home . They would be watching movie clueless of what is going on at home . My chacha ji was destined to experience this . .. I was thinking.. how long we will have to be here .. what will happen if fire brigade does not come .. what if fire is not controlled and it spreads more .. these thoughts were running in my mind suddenly we hear someone shouting.. terrace is open .. come fast.. Really?? How did that happen.. who opened the terrace? From where they got keys.. no idea till now ..

What a relief it was when we reached terrace. The whole experience lasted for 3 hours . When fire had subsided. We went home . But power cut was still there . The smell of smoke was still there . We went to sleep.. thinking what a day ?? Anything can happen any time and you don’t get time to think or plan .

Three to four days we could not stay in the house because of power cut and smell . We stayed in our Lake place house.

Few incident in life you cannot forget..