[ Wee hours of Sunday
morning, the 10th, April 2016.In a firework mishap that broke out in
the Puttingal Devi temple at Paravur in Kollam district, Kerala, 110 people got
killed and 400-odd injured. Display of fireworks was held despite a ban imposed
by the District Collector. Pankajakshi Amma, an 80-old octogenarian made the
ban happen through a complaint she has been making for years. She got the ban,
but, unfortunately, couldn’t stop the temple authorities from displaying the
fireworks.]
*
She is Pankajakshi Amma, a
native of the Paravur village – a village in the news for all wrong reasons. An
octogenarian, she is crestfallen. Still in the grip of shock waves, she
mumbles: “Had the temple authorities honored the ban and heard my plea…” She
sighs, lets out an air of helplessness as if she is the cause of the Sunday
chaos.
Constantly in a stupor, she was not able to
focus on her daily routine. For, her mind is still at the place where the
tragedy happened. Restless, she speaks
in a non sequitur. No one including Praksh, her son, can decipher her mawkish
monologues.
For the first time in her
life she prays to the Puttingal Devi to take away her life as the goddess did
with the victims of the Sunday mishap. In fact, after the gory fireworks blast
that put out 110 precious human lives and injured around 400 persons, she is
praying rather vigorously for the last five days.
That the goddess didn’t bless the devotees at
the end of the festival as per the prevailing custom make Pankajakshi miff at the
Devi. ‘You didn’t bless them, Devi, but
burnt them as if they were a bunch of match sticks’, she says to herself in a
voice tinged with dismay.
A cold sweat popped up in her
forehead. Her constant crying for the last five days dry her eyes of tears. She
now wishes she were one of those star-crossed people who got blazed in the
firework mishap. When she thinks about the death of Surendran, the contractor,
and his competitors who were responsible for the tragedy, her stomach churns.
She feels like throwing up. Surendran who got 60 per cent burns died on the
spot.
“Surendra, please don’t break
the ban. Your competitive pyrotechnic display of fireworks will end only in disasters.”
She could now remember telling him all through the Saturday. But all her pleas
fell on deaf ears.
Her heart beats fast. She
knows all is not well with it since she had angioplasty and open heart surgery
years back. Her breath becomes hard and she feels her emaciated body trembles often.
The grisly incident she saw on the Sunday last still rattles her nerves and
makes her forlorn. ‘Don’t lose heart, lady. You did what you could,’ she hears
a voice speak from her head and try to console her embittered mind.
‘How can I pull my heart when
I still hear the piteous cries of people getting hit by swirls of flames and
burnt out so horribly,’ she moans.
She recalls a big blaze
spread around a congregation and, in no time, the crowd got engulfed in flames.
Their delight of watching the marvels of the firework soon turned into cries of
death. Bombed by crackers and torched by balls of fire, they shrieked like
hell.
Charred
bodies lay strewn all over the temple premise. The air got polluted and there
wafted a nauseating odor all around. Bodies mutilated beyond recognition gave
gruesome sight. She saw flames and columns of fire rose on all sides of the
temple ground, which looked like a war ravaged zone.
The power supply got snapped all of a sudden
making it hard for the rescue team to continue their work. With the help of flashlights,
all dead bodies got lifted to the waiting ambulances. Crowds of people were
groping in the dark to find out their missing relatives/friends. Their heart
piercing cries became unendurable when they identified their father or mother
or sibling from charred or mutilated bodies. Shocked and shuddered, Pankajakshi
covered her ears with the palms of her hands.
She cannot no longer stand.
All the gruesome scenes of Sunday morning rush to her mind. They give her involuntary
shudder. She feels a whiff of sea breeze brush her face. But it cannot repress
the heat that is getting generated in her mind. Grabbing hold of her fast
beating chest, she plonks on the pyol [platform built along the house wall that
faces the street] that too got damaged in the firework disaster. The whole of
the temple premise starting from her house is littered with heaps of papers –
all remnants of burnt out crackers and, smoke is still billowing from them.
A week went by since the catastrophe happened.
Another Monday now bloomed. The Puttingal Devi temple is open and the goddess,
decked up with fineries, now waits for her devotees. Pankajakshi goes into the
sanctum and stand before the Devi with her eyes closed. She then comes out and
circumambulate the outer prahar thrice.
When she steps into the road,
it’s like a graveyard and people milling the temple looks like mourners.
Holding a big leather bag in hands, she walks down the road towards the bus
station.
“Ma,” she stops when she
hears Prakash calls out her. He must have run all the way home, following her
“Ma, where are you going?” He asks her, gasping for breath.
“Trivandrum, my child,” she
whispers, patting on his head. To get a ban on the ensuing display of fireworks
at Thrissur temple, I am going to file a writ petition in the High Court. Hope,
the Court will grant the ban after what we had in Paravur last week.” She
speaks in her downright tone with her usual enthusiasm.
“Ma, for god’s sake, don’t do
that.” Prakash gets scared. Fear lurk in his eyes. “Did you forget ruffians
bullied us of dire consequences in the wake of a ban you got for the display of
fireworks in the Puttingal temple festival? Now they may kill all of us if they
know what you are doing. Ma, please don’t go…” His voice fades away as he sees
his mom leaves him with a jerk.
Holding her head high,
Pankajakshi walks fast towards the bus station. For her, the cause she is
fighting for is more important than her survival or for that matter the
survival of her family.
*
[This post happens when I
begin to look at the tragedy through the eyes of the beleaguered Pankajakshi
Amma. So, readers must not suppose the incident/conversations I have narrated above
are true. A blogger, I dedicate this post as a tribute to the old woman and her
continuing fight for a cause.]
Images courtesy: Google
