‘She was the light of my life’: Kin mourn those killed in Goa club fire — wives, mothers, a brother

Vinod Kumar, his two sisters-in-law Anita Joshi and Saroj Joshi, and his older brother’s wife Kamala were among the 25 people who were killed in the fire that destroyed a nightclub in Arpora village in North Goa past midnight on Saturday.

Five members of the family, holidaying in Goa since December 2, were dining at the nightclub, Birch By Romeo Lane. Vinod’s wife Bhavana was the only one who survived – Vinod managed to guide her outside before collapsing himself.

“Vinod pushed Bhavana out, but then he fainted due to the smoke. He died while trying to save the others. Look at the body… kuchh jalaa nahin hai zyada. Dum ghut gaya uska (the body isn’t burnt, he died of suffocation),” whispered a relative to another.

“Zyadatar staff maare gaye hain. Tourist mein yahi the… (Most of those who died were employees, they are the only tourists),” someone else said.

Vivek, Anita’s husband, stood as though numb, staring silently at his wife’s pyre. A sympathetic bystander asked him gently, “Aap Naraina mein akele rehte the? (Did your wife and you stay by yourselves in Naraina?)”.

“Nahin, iske saath rehta tha. Ab akele rahunga, (No, I stayed with her. Now I will stay alone),” replied Vivek.

Vivek is 42; Anita was 40. Neither of them had wanted to get married, Vivek said. But they did – only last year.

“The Covid-19 pandemic changed everything. I felt that I needed a partner to get through life. Some family friends introduced Anita and me. We sort of dated for a couple of years, and got married last year,” he said.

Anita, Vivek said, had told him she would return from Goa before December 11 – what would have been the first anniversary of their wedding.

The couple had gone together to Lucknow, Vivek’s home town, on November 28. They had been married in Lucknow, but had somehow never seen their wedding pictures. “Iss baar pehli baar dekha, saath mein. (We saw it for the first time, together.) After we came back to Delhi, she left for Goa with her sisters. How she loved them…,” he said.

Vivek and Anita had planned to be together on their first anniversary. “Now I can only look at her pictures on my phone, and I then remember her body. She was the light of my life,” Vivek said.

And then there was Naveen – the older brother of Vinod, and the husband of Kamala, both of whom did not return alive from Goa. As the flames leapt from the four pyres, he sat on a bench nearby.

“Bus naam ka hi chhota bhai tha. (Vinod was my younger brother only in age.) He was the one who ran the family. Birthdays, functions, everything…bound us all together. He was not even keen on going to Goa. But Bhavana and the other woman insisted that he come along. Who would take their photographs, they asked,” Naveen said.

Naveen lived with Kamala and their two children in Karawal Nagar, in what has been their family’s home for 40 years. Vinod lived with Bhavana and their two children in Vasundhara, Ghaziabad. The distance did nothing to diminish their bond, the family was very close-knit, and shared all their joys, Naveen said.

“Bhavana has told me that they were staying at a resort close to the nightclub, so they had arrived sooner than most other customers. They were having dinner when the incident happened. Our family is destroyed. Four children have lost a parent,” Naveen said.

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