It was Friday the 13th, the June of 1997. The newspaper I worked for back then functioned out of a floor each of two adjacent high-rises in New Delhi’s Connaught Place area. One building housed the reporting and the features sections and also the office of the much-dreaded editor-in-chief, who now happens to be a minister in the Modi Government. In the other building was located the sports and the business sections and also the all-powerful news desk.
I was a young reporter at the time. That evening, around 8 o’clock, I happened to be all alone in the office — most people had left for the day, some others were out on assignments — when the phone rang. It was a call from the news desk. “Apparently there has been a fire at Uphaar Cinema,” the news editor said, “Can you go and take a look?”
I took an autorickshaw and rushed to Uphaar Cinema, located in South Delhi. I braced myself to see charred bodies being pulled out of the theatre. But it turned out that the fire had been put out and the bodies already taken away, some of them to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the remaining to the Safdarjung Hospital. The fire had broken out at 4.55 p.m., when patrons were already into the second half of the movie Border , which had released that day.
From the theatre, I rushed to the Safdarjung Hospital, once again bracing myself to see charred bodies. But what I saw there was even more heart-wrenching. Intact bodies of young men and women, in their best attire, were laid out on the floor. Their faces were covered with pieces of cloths that in all likelihood belonged to them: handkerchiefs, scarves, dupattas. It was difficult to believe they were dead, because their bodies bore not a scratch, leave alone fatal burns or injuries. They had all died of asphyxia — the total death toll being 59.
The handkerchief slid off the face of a young stubble-wearing man lying not very far from my feet. He seemed to be fast asleep, sleeping a very peaceful sleep. I was only 26 at the time, and the sight of so many bodies spread out in front of me, with most of the dead as old as I was then, taught me that you cannot take human life — including your own — for granted. Anything can happen any time.
But why am I suddenly recalling this 20-year-old episode?
That’s because I came across this piece of fresh news barely hours ago: “The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered one year in jail for city-based builder Gopal Ansal, who with his elder brother, Sushil, owned a south Delhi cinema hall where a fire killed 59 people 20 years ago.”
Twenty years is a long time, and during these 20 years — from 1997 to 2017 — India has transformed far more drastically than it had in the preceding 100 years. A man slipping into coma in 1997 and regaining his senses in 2017 would wake up to an altogether different India — an India of malls, Internet, smartphones, cashless transactions and so forth. He would be constantly rubbing his eyes in wonder.
Only one thing would not surprise him: the Supreme Court order on the Uphaar fire tragedy. That would be one aspect of the country instantly recognisable to him: the inordinately long time taken to dispense justice.
