The Second Element…

‘Fire’ one of the elements this mortal coil is composed of… ‘Fire’ the source of warmth… ‘Fire’ that can devour the mightiest… and ‘Fire’ that sustains the tiniest… Recently the fury of fire was witnessed at the depot of Indian Oil Corporation in Jaipur which gutted many factories and caused a whopping loss of hundreds of crores of rupees. It turned the pink city into a black one for a couple of days. The devastation started on October 29, 2009 and lasted till November 6, 2009 burning lakhs of litres of fuel in all the twelve storage tanks. The government sounded helpless. The fire brigades which otherwise enjoy leisurely duty hours were put to work all of a sudden, but to no avail. Everybody seemed concerned and other cities began to take notice of their safety arrangements with the oil depots. But their concern, too, seems to have doused by now and spirits dampened. As usual, the Committees and Commissions have been customarily set up to probe into the reasons and other pertinent issues but they will take their own ‘sweet’ time to reach the findings. Indeed public memory is very short-lived and soon it will be ‘nobody’s concern’. But who will bear the brunt of all this? The government? Not at all. The Bureaucrats? Never. The only scapegoat is the poor tax-payer and the common man who will suffer from respiratory problems and dermatological disorders due to the suspended particulate matter which is far higher than the permissible limits in those areas of the city. The targets that the environment-protection groups the world over set for themselves for a year have been toppled down by just one lapse. It was not just a lapse, it was a crime perpetrated against mankind. A neglected spark has burnt the house. But the question arises why the spark was neglected at all. Why couldn’t the authorities foresee it? Was it a lack of vision on their part or a lackadaisical attitude, typical of a government official these days? How long has it been since they had their mock-drills last or may be they never had any mock-drills at all since the beginning? Who is accountable – the government or the Indian Oil Corporation? Why were the storage-tanks not emptied from the outlet at the bottom of the tanks? Or may be, there was no such outlet at all? These questions will always perturb a conscientious heart, but to those riding roughshod over their conscience these questions are immaterial. I even go to the extent of sensing some malpractice like oil pilferage happening at the depot and the people involved seem to have taken this ‘ultimate’ step to cover their misdeeds which could otherwise surface through stock checking. At this juncture, I can only pray to God to grant those careless fellows some wisdom to anticipate the accident and take measures in time. And I also pray to God to grant serenity to those brave souls who did their bit to save the loss as much as they could without being selfish about their lives.