Tragic July

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I am neither superstitious nor a believer in jinx. But the month of July seems to be jinxed for Mumbaikars from the last three years.

On July 26th 2005, 944 mm of rain lashed Mumbai in four hours leaving nearly 1,000 people dead and loss of property worth crores of rupees.

On July 11th, 2006, seven bombs ripped apart seven trains across the western railway line leaving 187 commuters dead and over 800 injured.

So you may ask me what happened this year. Till the afternoon of 18th July, 2007, I was glad that no form of tragedy has struck Mumbai this July to make it a tragic hatrick. But I was celebrating too early. Around 5.45 pm on 18th July, a residential building collapses in Borivali leaving 29 people dead and more than 11 seriously injured.

Yet another human tragedy and precious lives lost. Perfectly happy middle class families are now left to wonder what has struck them. Their precious nest which they called Sweet Home no longer exists.

Years of hard earned money spent to buy that priced asset in form of real estate is gone forever. And to top it all, dear family members will forever remain a memory or in form of photo albums if they manage to recover it from the debris.

As a journalist I have witnessed all the three tragic events that have taken place in July in the last three years. It's quite traumatic to witness lives of people turning topsy turvy within no seconds for no fault of theirs. In the building collapse case, the building was neither dilapidated nor on the list of 19,000 dangerous buildings prepared by the Bombay Municipal Corporation. But illegal renovation work carried out by one of the ground floor residents resulted in the entire building crashing like a pack of cards.

Mumbai is a city of dreams. Yet tragic events like these show why we can never be sure of what will happen next. You might have never known pain in your life but it just takes a few minutes to change all of that and leave you in misery for your entire life.

Many may say that this building tragedy does not affect all Mumbaikars like the floods or the bomb blasts.

But I beg to differ. Many buildings in Mumbai are like ticking time bombs waiting to explode. The official list says 19,000 buildings are in dilapidated condition and are in danger of collapsing any moment. But the unofficial list could be much higher.

Many people have already done rampant illegal renovation inside their flats to make their living space more spacious, probably oblivious of the fact that the building structure is getting weak.

I hope that this building collapse will wake up the residents of Mumbai and the BMC to prevent another tragedy. It's better to live in a small house than illegally renovate and see it fall down like pack of cards destroying both property and precious innocent lives.