A 28-year-old woman was the first in a family of seven to cross from a fourth-floor terrace to another, the 4ft-gap between the two bridged by a sofa her husband and father-in-law had managed to place on the roof railings.

Nidhi Keswani, cradling her two-month-old daughter in her arms, followed other members of her family from their apartment on the third floor to the terrace as smoke billowed from the first floor of the Triangular Park building around 5.30am on Wednesday. Nidhi recounted the heart-in-the-mouth escape to Metro, 10 hours later.

 

We were up on the terrace and, engulfed in thick black smoke, were struggling to breathe. My husband (Gopal) and father-in-law (Dilip) had flung a sofa between our building and the adjacent one and luckily it sat on the railings of the two terraces. We had a bridge!

I had to step on the sofa hanging at a height of 40ft and reach the other terrace to avoid being choked by the smoke. There was no other escape route.

We had to hurry as thick smoke was coming up from the staircase. We were crying in panic.

Would the sofa be able to take my weight? What if it gave way and I plunged to the ground? Would it be able to bear the weight of the others? What would happen if the others failed to make it? Questions swirled in my mind thick and fast but there was no time to think.

None of us had a word on our lips but all of us knew that the hanging sofa was our only route to safety - the only way to save my two little children (Prathna and Vivaan).

As I gingerly stepped on the sofa, after taking a look at my children and offering a prayer, I dared not look down.

In two steps I crossed the gap, closed my eyes and jumped onto the terrace of our neighbours.

I was the first one to go and I had to make it fast so that I could hold and secure one end of the sofa and help my children and other members of the family to safety.

While I was crossing the gap, my husband and father-in-law held the other end of the sofa.

We could hardly believe what was unfolding before us. It was almost like what we see in movies. I can't explain what we went through in those 15-20 minutes we were up there, the smoke all around us....

My husband had spotted the sofa at the rear of the terrace. He and my father-in-law dragged it to the part of the terrace that was closest to the adjacent building. The gap between the two was about 4ft....

My husband had woken me up after being alerted by the guards of our building who were running up and down the staircase and shouting "fire... fire".

I took my daughter in my arms and we went to the other bedrooms to wake up my in-laws and son.

We climbed up the dark staircase filled with thick black smoke. We only had the light from our mobile phones to guide us. All the way we struggled to breathe.

My daughter Prathna, who will complete three months on January 8, was in my arms, sleeping. My three-year-old son Vivaan was crying.... Prathna was named by my husband's aunt. God heard our prayers today and saved all of us.