Dockyard building collapsed in September 2013, killing 62.
The news of the collapse of Ghatkopar’s Siddhi Sai Cooperative Housing Society on Tuesday made the residents of Borivali’s Laxmi Chhaya building and Dockyard Road’s Babu Genu Mandai building revisit the horrors of a similar tragedy in the past. “I saw myself when I watched the victims of Ghatkopar’s building collapse on TV channels on Tuesday,” said Rakesh Malviya, one of the survivors of Laxmi Chhaya building collapse in 2007.
Malviya, a 46-year-old businessman who lost his father in the mishap, recounts the horror and says they have moved on, but the incident has left a scar on their minds for life. He says, “Life returned to normalcy two years after the incident took place, but we could never forget what all we went through then.”
Malviya’s 74-year-old father was rescued from under the debris. However, he could never recover from the injuries and died six months later. The family subsequently lived on rent for five years. “The victims of building collapse do not just lose their homes, but their dreams and their identity proofs. We had nothing when the incident happened. We were left only with the clothes we were wearing. Pan cards, ration card, other identity proofs all lost. It took us a few years to get back everything,” recounts Malviya.
For another Laxmi Chhaya survivor, Durgesh Kothari, an architect by profession, the Tuesday’s incident brought a sense of “deja vu”. At least 30 died and 100 were injured in the incident.
“My life changed overnight after that incident. Talking about it just hurts me more,” said Kothari, making little effort to hold back his tears. Exactly a decade ago, in July 2007, Kothari had waited all night, with his fingers crossed and a prayer on his lips, hoping that his parents, grandmother and younger sister would be pulled out alive from the rubble until their bodies were recovered by the rescue team.
“I avoid reading news articles about building collapse. It pains to see others going through the horror we had gone through ten years ago. I had lost all hope,” he says. It has been around six years when the new Laxmi Chhaya building was built. The new building today stands on the same location. However, there are no traces of the old Laxmi Chhaya building.
The situation of the survivors of Babu Genu Mandai building at Dockyard is no different. The mishap still haunts the survivors. Deepika Mohite, who lived in Babu Genu Municipal Market building, is still piecing her life together after the four-storeyed Dockyard building collapsed in September 2013, killing 62. She was in the building with her husband, Nilesh Jadhav, when the building crumbled down. Mohite had to subsequently live with her relatives in Wadala.
