Ever been inside a burns ward in a hospital? It is not a pleasant sight, worse, the smell gets to you, and remains with you. Most doctors advice you to tie a kerchief over your mouth and nose as you enter the ward. It is as much for the safety of the patient as it is for the well-being for the visitor. Most first timers complain of nausea and end up puking after their maiden trip.
Many years ago I remember going to Charkhi Dadri, the site of the worst air accident the world has ever seen. 349 people charred to death in a matter of minutes. The debris of the two aircrafts was spread over a 7 km area. As I drove late in the evening to find the crash site, one of the locals suggested helpfully : "Just follow the smell of burning flesh, you will find the main spot."
The smell of burning flesh lingers on for a long time after it is supposed to have receded. That night in Charkhi Dadri was not nice. Years later in Tamil Nadu, in south India, I was to encounter smell of burning flesh all over again. I was covering a different story not too far and was one of the first persons to reach the spot. This time 25 people had been charred to death in a mental hospital. The scale of the tragedy was comparatively much smaller, yet I was seriously disturbed by what I saw.
Charred bodies chained to bed posts, worse, even trees. Helpless inmates trapped in the fire, unable to flee because they had been chained. I didn't know anyone of them. Even if I had, I wouldn't have recognized anyone from what was left of them.
As a colleague next to me discussed, even haggled, with another colleague thousands of miles away about how many minutes and seconds should be spent on telling this tale of 25 deaths I played out in my mind the exact sequence of events that ended with the end of 25 lives. I wondered where they were from, for how many years were they in this institution, how they must have squirmed and twisted and screamed to get out of the way of the approaching flames. A video played out in my mind, in graphic detail, and I was about as successful in putting out the imagery from my mind as the chained inmates had been with the fire.
Many years ago I remember going to Charkhi Dadri, the site of the worst air accident the world has ever seen. 349 people charred to death in a matter of minutes. The debris of the two aircrafts was spread over a 7 km area. As I drove late in the evening to find the crash site, one of the locals suggested helpfully : "Just follow the smell of burning flesh, you will find the main spot."
The smell of burning flesh lingers on for a long time after it is supposed to have receded. That night in Charkhi Dadri was not nice. Years later in Tamil Nadu, in south India, I was to encounter smell of burning flesh all over again. I was covering a different story not too far and was one of the first persons to reach the spot. This time 25 people had been charred to death in a mental hospital. The scale of the tragedy was comparatively much smaller, yet I was seriously disturbed by what I saw.
Charred bodies chained to bed posts, worse, even trees. Helpless inmates trapped in the fire, unable to flee because they had been chained. I didn't know anyone of them. Even if I had, I wouldn't have recognized anyone from what was left of them.
As a colleague next to me discussed, even haggled, with another colleague thousands of miles away about how many minutes and seconds should be spent on telling this tale of 25 deaths I played out in my mind the exact sequence of events that ended with the end of 25 lives. I wondered where they were from, for how many years were they in this institution, how they must have squirmed and twisted and screamed to get out of the way of the approaching flames. A video played out in my mind, in graphic detail, and I was about as successful in putting out the imagery from my mind as the chained inmates had been with the fire.
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