A Road and a Fire Engine

It was unfortunate that a fire engine came to my village once. Unfortunate not because it came, but because it had to. It was a village where a bus would not come once a day. Let alone bus, even a road refused to come to the village for very long. So, I can almost forgive the bus.

Fire engine did not have a choice though. Because you see, a fire engine does not amble around. When it starts out, it knows where exactly it needs to go, when it should reach and what it should do. Though it may have to go to many different places, far and nearby, there is only thing it has to do.

Anyway, it had to come to that village where even a road would not. I remember, when Devegowda became the Prime Minister, he promised that the road would be brought to the village finally. But then, he got busy making road for next Government.

Then Vajpayee came to power. He made some schemes to bring roads to villages. Many roads got convinced and went to villages. But not this one. No. This Road did not budge. I was a kid then. I thought the Road somehow did not like my village very much. As if to rub salt on our wounds, it came till a village about 3km from mine. It wouldn’t come an inch further. MPs came and left. MLAs came and left. But the Road did not.

We would often go till the nearby village. Not to look at the Road. But to catch the bus that came with the Road.

So, this proved our hypothesis about the bus though. If the Road came, then the bus would come along. I think, the bus did not really have any problem with my village. It loves to have more and more people. But it just could not come on its own. We could understand.

Now that I have grown up and come to live in a city, I think, even the Road preferred to go to a city than come to a village.

Anyway, I was supposed to tell you about the fire engine. But I went off-the-track to Road!

I was probably in my 3rd or 4th standard then. It was a small village. As small as a village can be. You know how it is in the dry season. You know, right? OK, let me tell you.

Though the village is amidst evergreen forests of the Western Ghats, it’s surrounded by large Teak Wood forests. By January and February, they would shed their dry leaves and stand naked. Village would finish harvesting paddy. Every cowshed roof would be stuffed with hay. And yes, most cowsheds had a “Bio Gas” station right next to or some even inside them.

I think you are beginning to get the picture.

Did I tell you the village was very small? It was so small that 4 of the 5 houses touched one another at one or the other corner. Imagine you draw a circle around the 4 houses. Now, the back side of each house would be towards the center of the circle and front side of them would face the circumference.

I know you are struggling. Before you tell me that my writing is bad or I tell you that your imagination is bad, it’s better I show you a picture. So, here is a map I drew. Take a good look. That box in red color is the cowshed; the central piece of this story.

Village Map - Not to mesure. H = House, CS = Cowshed

Now that we have established the environment in which this story was taking place, let’s come to that fateful day.

It was a Sunday. Like any other Sunday, we were watching a TV serial “Sri Krishna” on Door Darshan. It was around 9 or 10 in the morning. Usually, all the kids in the village watched the serial at same house. I think it was more because we were scared of Kansa’s devilish laugh which he used as a punctuation mark. Don’t believe me? Watch some episodes on YouTube and come back. Don’t blame me if they look funny now. They were not when we were kids. I don’t know what happened in the meantime.

We are going off the track once again🤔

So, we were watching the serial when we suddenly heard a loud noise. For a few seconds we thought Kansa changed his laugh and was going to be more violent now. Only when the noise became louder and elders started running out, we realised it was not Kansa.

We too ran out only to find the cowshed (colored in read above) engulfed in huge fire. Elders, men and women alike, ran out with whatever containers they could grab. They brought water in every which way they could.

I think I already told you it was a small village. It still is. How many people do you think would live in such a small village with only 5 houses. If you thought “5 * 3” and shout “fifteeeeen!!”, I could only say you are good at elementary math. But you are wrong, nonetheless. There were about 25 to 30 people lived in the village. But, leaving out the kids who could not carry water, the elders who could also not carry water, those who could carry the water but were not in the village that particular day, there would have been only 15 people effectively. So, your margin of error is acceptable, in fact.

But what could 15 people with small containers do against a biogas blast?

So, by the time the protagonist of the story finally arrived on the stage, flame had swallowed the cowshed excluding the cows. Not that the flame had some special affection or devotion towards them. But some villagers did who risked their lives to save the cows.

Only later we found out the source of the fire. The owner of the cowshed smoked “beedi”, a poorer cousin of cigarette (don't ask me for the brand, please). That day, after cleaning the cowshed, he sat there and smoked one or two (apparently, his wife didn't approve of him smoking, so he had to find such places), and tossed them flippantly before going back home. It seems the “beedi” took offense with this attitude and spread the flame to hay. The hay being dry found this new company interesting and lit up immediately. Before soon, the fire reached the biogas. BOOOOM!!!💥💥💥

For a few days after the incident, a strange silence took hold of the village. The fire engine, though arrived late (like the Police in movies), had saved the small village from becoming smaller. We had to cross the cowshed every day while going to school. But now, there stood a heap of charred remains of the shed staring grimly at us whenever we passed it.