Mumbai: Six women, a catering unit and a fire that snuffed out their lives, dreams

And then, on September 24, a fire that fed on the gas from a leaking cylinder swallowed the narrow cooking area and spread through the 500 sq ft unit. All six women sustained severe burns. A week later, they were all dead.

It was around eight years ago that Shivani, 53, started ‘Shivani Catering Services’, a popular eatery and takeaway that she ran out of a rented space at Ram Kishan Mistry Chawl on Military Road, around 400 metres from Kandivali (East) railway station. Shivani began with the Gujarati thepla, the snack that serves as a meal in itself and is a popular eat-on-the-go dish among the unit’s clients — mostly people from the nearby hostels and slum pockets. The unit recently started taking lunch and dinner orders as well.

Over time, Shivani had built a network of workers who she would call depending on the orders that day, paying them Rs 50-60 an hour. A month ago, she moved to a space a couple of shops away. It was this shop that caught fire on September 24. The board, left behind by the earlier occupants, still says ‘Geeta Timber House’, its yellow shutters down.

“Shivani was particular about clearing the payment of her workers at the end of each day because she wanted them to have cash in hand when they went back home every evening. Sometimes, she would give them an advance payment since they had a lot of responsibilities — school fees, health issues and so on. They were like family members. Shivani even went on trips with them,” says Shivani’s husband, Mitul Gandhi, who runs an opticals business and lives in the Ashok Nagar area of Kandivali with his daughters, aged 25 and 22, who work in private firms. He says he is yet to take a call on whether to restart Shivani’s catering unit.

“Shivani employed several poor women in her unit. They worked from 7.30 am till late in the night, depending on the orders. She gave them money on an hourly basis so whenever the women got time, they came for work,” says Yogendra Mistry, who rented the space to Shivani for Rs 50,000 a month.

That morning, there were seven of them at work – the six women and Manaram, 55, the only male cook at the unit. Manaram is recuperating at Airoli Hospital with 40 per cent burns.

Police said that around 9.30 am, after one of the six cylinders in the unit started leaking, the women and Manaram stepped out briefly, before heading back inside. “Manaram kept the cylinder in a bucket of water, hoping it would check the leak. But it seems a spark from an electric board ignited the gas and the fire spread through the space within seconds,” said Senior Inspector Jayawant Shinde of the Samta Nagar Police station.

An FIR has been registered against Shivani and shop owner Mistry for alleged negligence.

On September 30, a day after Shivani died, Durgavati Gupta, 38, who was admitted to the civic-run Kasturba Hospital, succumbed to the 90 per cent burns she sustained in the fire.

Durgavati lived in the Ram Nagar slum with her husband Ram Manohar, an auto driver, and their sons. While her elder son Vikas, 20, is studying for a diploma in Information Technology, her 18-year-old younger son Ritik is a student of engineering at a college in Kandivali.

Durgavati had recently taken a loan of Rs 1.8 lakh from a cooperative society to pay her younger son’s fees.

“She worked for almost 8 to 10 hours so she could pay the loan ,” says Durgavati’s brother Vinod Gupta.

Vinod suffered a second blow that day – his “raakhi sister” Janaki was among the dead. Janaki, 43, who suffered 70 per cent burns in the fire, had been rushed to the Airoli Burns Hospital, around 30 km from the catering unit.

It was only a year ago that Janaki moved to Mumbai from her village in Uttar Pradesh with her paralysed husband and four children, all between 8 and 15 years.

“Janaki’s husband was working in Dubai but two years ago, he came to India and settled down in their village. But he suffered a stroke and was paralysed, after which Janaki brought him to Mumbai for treatment. She also brought her four children along, hoping they could study here. It was my sister Durgavati who helped Janaki get a job at Shivani Catering Service and a room on rent in Ram Nagar. She worked almost 12 to 14 hours a day to afford her husband’s treatment, pay the rent of the house and take care of her children,” says Vinod.

Things were beginning to look up for the family when tragedy struck. “Janaki’s husband was getting better and two weeks ago, he got a job as a security guard where he used to sit for a few hours,” says Vinod.

Like Shivani, Durgavati and Janaki, the others who died – Raksha Joshi, 47, Nitu Gupta, 31, and Punita Gautam, 28, succumbed to their burns on September 28, four days after the fire – too left behind their stories and struggles. Nitu, who separated from her husband a year ago, lived in the Ram Nagar slum with her parents and five-year-old son. Punita and her husband Manoj lived nearby. Raksha lived in the Hanuman Nagar area of Kandivali with her younger son, a Class 12 student, while her elder child is married.