Major fire incidents in Kolkata are an annual routine, statistically speaking.
For somebody like me, who's trodden through city's tangled mesh of roads, lanes, by-lanes during school, college and initial years of journalistic life, fire incidents have been crucial curves on the career-graph.
Fire incidents remind me of all those comic-book characters who are journalists cum superheroes. But let me put it straight, I am merely a journalist (superhero journos are copy-righted! So I don't intend to be one.).
Long, not very long, ago - I was at Kolkata book fair. And then there was fire! Vaguely recollecting, like all commoners I had to run out to save self. It was too much a child within me. Only a day later did I realise that I had given death a beat. Smoke in the sky from a distance, as I saw, was a monster we see in science fiction.
A second tragedy - a fire at China Bazar in central Kolkata was even more strange and more strangely did I react this time. On my way back from tuition class, an unfortunate sight greeted me. Flames and flames. By this time, I had acquired a fancy for still photographs and had purchased a simple reel-camera. I rushed home, got it out, loaded it on way back to spot and shot best angles possible. This was much before, I knew what was journalism and with no hint that I would become one, one day. Some curiosity took over. I didn't know why was I out with a camera, who will see these photographs or why i need to document this incident at all.
My third stint with Kolkata fire was a special assignment that i bagged with a reputed newspaper as a freelancer, when i was still in college. Here i had the chance to interview the minister concerned, visit the training institute for fire personnel and write a real big story. This went as a full page package.
Thereafter, this unfortunate strain has come to live all along in my professional life. Fire on Park Street, last year, was no adventure. It mocks at our inability to check it each time it peeps out through windows and corridors of Kolkata's concrete structures.
This time it's a hospital.
Two lessons:
1. Journos are not superheroes in real life. Those who intend to become journos, should admire journos cum superheroes to the extent of them being great works of art. Covering spot-fires are as bad as fighting for life. Hats off to all my colleagues who have been on job, as much as I have been, covering fire incidents. This is usually a serious moment and no journo worth his name distorts or tends to distort facts. Those who do, are wrong people in the right profession.
2. Life's precious. It hurts to see people gone, who till yesterday were around. Some close, some lesser close. Let's respect and oblige fire safety norms we have made for ourselves.
Join me in one-minute silence/prayer for those friends who lost their lives to fire.
For somebody like me, who's trodden through city's tangled mesh of roads, lanes, by-lanes during school, college and initial years of journalistic life, fire incidents have been crucial curves on the career-graph.
Fire incidents remind me of all those comic-book characters who are journalists cum superheroes. But let me put it straight, I am merely a journalist (superhero journos are copy-righted! So I don't intend to be one.).
Long, not very long, ago - I was at Kolkata book fair. And then there was fire! Vaguely recollecting, like all commoners I had to run out to save self. It was too much a child within me. Only a day later did I realise that I had given death a beat. Smoke in the sky from a distance, as I saw, was a monster we see in science fiction.
A second tragedy - a fire at China Bazar in central Kolkata was even more strange and more strangely did I react this time. On my way back from tuition class, an unfortunate sight greeted me. Flames and flames. By this time, I had acquired a fancy for still photographs and had purchased a simple reel-camera. I rushed home, got it out, loaded it on way back to spot and shot best angles possible. This was much before, I knew what was journalism and with no hint that I would become one, one day. Some curiosity took over. I didn't know why was I out with a camera, who will see these photographs or why i need to document this incident at all.
My third stint with Kolkata fire was a special assignment that i bagged with a reputed newspaper as a freelancer, when i was still in college. Here i had the chance to interview the minister concerned, visit the training institute for fire personnel and write a real big story. This went as a full page package.
Thereafter, this unfortunate strain has come to live all along in my professional life. Fire on Park Street, last year, was no adventure. It mocks at our inability to check it each time it peeps out through windows and corridors of Kolkata's concrete structures.
This time it's a hospital.
Two lessons:
1. Journos are not superheroes in real life. Those who intend to become journos, should admire journos cum superheroes to the extent of them being great works of art. Covering spot-fires are as bad as fighting for life. Hats off to all my colleagues who have been on job, as much as I have been, covering fire incidents. This is usually a serious moment and no journo worth his name distorts or tends to distort facts. Those who do, are wrong people in the right profession.
2. Life's precious. It hurts to see people gone, who till yesterday were around. Some close, some lesser close. Let's respect and oblige fire safety norms we have made for ourselves.
Join me in one-minute silence/prayer for those friends who lost their lives to fire.
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