“God is watching!” My maternal grandmother ever so lovingly imprinted this on my consciousness when I was four years old. All that happens to me is God’s work for me. I learned to accept both joy and sadness at the same time in a beautiful tender way.

I am one of the survivors of the Carlton Tower fire tragedy that shook Bengaluru on February 23, 2010.

We were on a conference call around 4 pm that day, and the call got disconnected. In no time, thick smoke crept in — a sign of a fire mishap.

The toxic fumes engulfed us, but I had no clue how to use a fire extinguisher. My skin burnt, and I coughed excruciatingly — with the awful-smelling smoke piercing through. Yet I carried the device and broke glass panes to get a single breath of clean air.

When it became impossible to breathe, I even tried to climb down using a water pipe from the seventh floor. But a colleague pulled me up. Maybe he wrongly thought that I was trying to jump. My body was ‘burning’, and the fire had spread.

I still wonder, along with my sons, about this step I took that day while we had a four-time kung fu champ and four other men in our office. (I must get the award for bravery on Republic Day.)

Despite telling each other not to jump, we saw our office boy jump off the seventh floor. The rope snapped and he died.

It would have been tough for us to survive had the police not intervened around 5.20 pm, brought us out and taken us straight to the hospital.

Rescue from fire and relief

At first, it was happiness to be rescued after inhaling the toxic fumes and being burnt. What followed was my first-hand experience of ‘disability’ breathlessness, the medical world and the melodrama caused by my family.

The fire tragedy killed nine people and affected many more. My condition was diagnosed as a post-smoke-inhalation injury, posterior glottic stenosis, in which the vocal folds get fixed in the midline position and the glottic airways get severely narrowed.

I tried hard to recover for the sake of my children. It took time, surrender and immense faith that there is a plan behind it all. God had a plan, as always.

So, even after cheating death several times and being hounded by uncertainty, there were instances where love would look up from a corner at me through a nurse or ayyama (helper) or a doctor, and assure me in many ways that “I am here”. I was given the title of being the best patient they ever had, and those kindnesses encouraged me to keep my goodness alive amid all the horror.

Nine surgeries in nine months

After nine months of hospitalisation with nine surgeries, I weighed barely 26kg — but I was happy to be alive and free to be away from tubes, oxygen cylinders, the negativity and the ‘to-do lists’.

I was full-on back — panting heavily, coughing (which makes my uterus and ovaries jump) and yet I was in a mighty hurry to bring back normalcy. Not realising my body was not the same anymore following a series of infections and the lack of funds and support.

I kept doing the necessary things like always — started going to therapy, read a lot, and attended healing workshops.

One night, as I sat wondering about the answers I was desperately seeking, I remembered a moment, a profound one, while I was battling in the ICU. Beside me were my parents, discussing the hopelessness of my situation. It didn’t occur to anybody that I would survive — and that even if I did, I might end up being bedridden for life.

The thing was that the government stepped in to support my ICU costs if I agreed to move to a general ward. Feeling the anxiety of my parents, and not wanting to be any kind of a burden, I agreed out of fear. And it struck me like lightning and was engraved in my soul that I chose love over death.

From that moment onwards, my life was transformed. I promised myself that I would never ever betray myself again.

Even as I grappled with a loss of vitality and impairment in physical functionality, I was happier being the way I was.

My windpipe and vocal cords have got constricted because of the amount of smoke I inhaled on that tragic day in 2010. Despite repeated surgeries, they have remained that way. So, I breathe with the help of a tracheostomy tube inserted in my larynx. When I must speak, I block the tube’s opening and that makes me audible.

‘Moving away from self-pity’

I resolved that I was going to work on myself. I began by moving away from self-pity. I stopped obsessing over the repeated trials and tribulations in my life culminating in some way in this gruesome fire and tragedy. I began to nurture my children.

This helped me repair and resurrect myself.

I started to participate in the movement to bring justice and closure to those nine families whose loved ones did not survive the fire.

This gave me a sense of purpose. It was not easy, but it kept me moving in a direction that I was very happy with.

I stopped viewing myself as a helpless, hapless victim. I decided to call myself ‘The Queen of the Carlton Fire’. That changes my perspective, opening me to the opportunity of embracing abundance thinking.

Therapy helped me. So did walking along with great souls, reading and re-reading their thoughts, observing nature, and shifting my attention from this whole gruesome experience to nurturing my children.

Soon, profound acknowledgements started coming my way and I started to thrive on them and my whole being started the process of repairing. Soon, I was in a phase where I took on the task of restoring justice to the nine people who didn’t survive the fire by attending the court hearings regularly. I knew all of them personally.

I had a melodious voice prior to the fire. I used to sing all the time. Post all the surgeries and recovery, my voice became very feeble and sounded raspier.

I started observing little infants breaking into belly laughter hearing my voice. Those glimpses elevated me. Soon, I observed animals being drawn to me and flocking to me — at a time when I was yearning for connection.

I received this divine love from animals. These furry young animals remind me that I am so much like them. I don’t take pride in the number of animals that I cook for and feed, but in this steadfast attention that I am able to offer them. Such is their love, and it fuels me consistently.