A massive fire that burnt down shanties beyond recognition on Thursday along the Circular Railway at Armenian Ghat, not only robbed the dwellers of hearth and home but sent dreams of daughters of getting married to smithereens.
Moyna Bibi (36) was at a loss. She was screaming in despair for not only seeing her shanty in flames but for irreparable loss she had been experiencing after witnessing to her hard-earned money to stitch together a new life of her two siblings on Sunday being reduced to ashes.
“What I will do? Fire has reduced me to pauper. My all belongings have been destroyed in the fire. My two daughters Kalpana Khatun (19) and Jyotsna Khatun( 23) were scheduled to get married on Sunday. Preparations and required shopping for that purpose had all been completed. Turmeric smearing rituals was fixed for tomorrow but the fire had robbed everything of me including cash worth Rs 70,000, groceries, sarees, and ornaments. How can I now recover those?”
Moyna Bibi screamed. It just came as bolt from the blue as we were gearing up for the Sunday’s wedding. “We are too poor to absorb such an humongous loss. How can we bear such an huge loss? We eke out our living by either collecting papers and cooking in others’ household or by doing works as domestic help. We cannot imagine how can we get over such a loss,” laments Moyna Bibi Ranu Begum (45), whose son Raju Seikh was to be getting married on Sunday too had the same story to tell.
She had nothing remain to bank on except a sense of disappointment and loss of hearth and home. “My son Raju Seikh was to be married on Sunday.
For this we were gearing up to make it a special one as all the needful had been done with the best of our efforts with limited wherewithal that we had.
But fire had robbed everything of us. We could not save anything except ourselves and our children.
We were the witness to seeing our dwellings burst into flames with nothing on offer to retrieve anything from the inferno,” said Ranu Begum.