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Sampat Mal Lodha and wife Suchitra who saw the fire from their window. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta
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The Lodha family lives diagonally opposite the Nandaram market complex, where they own nine shops that have been selling fabric for the past 38 years. Kashiram is part of it but the complex is referred to as the Nandaram market.
The market can be seen from their bedroom window on the seventh floor of 58D NS Bose Road. It was through this window that Sampat Mal Lodha, 59, and wife Suchitra spied the beginnings of the blaze that was to destroy their livelihood.
Among the first witnesses, the couple recounted how the horror unfolded.
Suchitra Lodha: Around 1am, I woke up to shouts from the road below. Several labourers, who work in the area, sleep on the pavements at night. I thought trouble had broken out among them — something that happens quite often — and did not bother to look out of the window.
But the noise grew louder. So, I peeped out of the window.
For a few minutes, I couldn’t make out what was happening. People were shouting and running up and down. Then I followed the direction they were looking and pointing at.
I saw the rear end of Nandaram all lit up. Suddenly, I realised what the source of the light was — flames leaping from Tirpalpatti in Jamunalal Bajaj Street!
The fire looked so frightening as it moved towards the market where we have our shops. My husband was asleep. “Aag…” I shouted.
Sampat Mal Lodha: I was woken up by my wife’s cry. She was pointing at something outside our window. Tall flames were surging towards our market. I went numb.
The thought of my nine shops and the stock kept there flashed across my mind. I frantically started calling up my employees who sleep in my shops at night.
They said the flames were fast moving toward the sections housing our shops. I told them to start tossing all the bundles of cloth out of the building and rushed to the spot with my son Sanjay.
There was complete chaos on the road. The shop owners on the ground floor were trying to salvage their stock. Big bundles of cloth and plastic were being dropped from different floors.
Two fire engines arrived at 2am. But after that, there was no sign of any other engine till 4am.
Suddenly, the blaze started to grow. The firefighters training water jets at the flames had to back off many times.
The fire started spreading to the top floors, out of the water jets’ reach. Only one skylift arrived a little later.
We managed to save a part of our stock but our shops were all gutted in front of our eyes. We couldn’t do a thing. This is a tragedy that will destroy hundreds of families.
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