Fireproof Version of Gujarat Carnage
CNN-IBN |
Dec 11, 2006
Amrita Tripathi, New Delhi: Set on the first night of the Gujarat carnage in 2002, Fireproof is a gut-wrenching story.
On the one hand, it is a story with more than its share of drama that works on different levels. And on the other, it's the quest of a father trying to navigate his riot-hit city with a newborn in tow.
But the newborn is no ordinary baby. Since he is born deformed, his father calls him Ithim.
"Frankly, I don't know where he came from. But for me, he kind of symbolised hope. Say, on that night, if the word hope had a human form, it would be somebody like him - newborn, incredibly deformed, with no chance in hell to live," says journalist and author, Raj Kamal Jha.
He insists that Fireproof is not a political statement. But it is a story that works on another level precisely because of the author's skill in moving the reader beyond the obvious 'shock and awe' of the riots and murders in the backdrop.
Spilling over from Jha's trip to Ahmedabad, a month after the riots, Fireproof is a profoundly human story, and a hard-hitting one, at that.
"In the story, there's a book talking, a watch, a towel, 5,000 things talking because when I went to that Gulbarga Housing Colony, all these things lying there. I just wondered if they could talk and they had a TV camera, what are the stories they could tell us. And I thought, they will not, so let me make something up," says Jha.
The protagonist Mr Jay's complicity, the horrors that befall all the little footnotes, the voices crying out to be heard—all this is something that will definitely stay with the reader.
With the head nurse who gives Mr Jay his baby, burned alive with two other doctors, the girl who's running for her life after seeing what happens to her family, Fireproof is a story that is sure to move you. Bottomline—the faint-of-heart be warned.
On the one hand, it is a story with more than its share of drama that works on different levels. And on the other, it's the quest of a father trying to navigate his riot-hit city with a newborn in tow.But the newborn is no ordinary baby. Since he is born deformed, his father calls him Ithim.
"Frankly, I don't know where he came from. But for me, he kind of symbolised hope. Say, on that night, if the word hope had a human form, it would be somebody like him - newborn, incredibly deformed, with no chance in hell to live," says journalist and author, Raj Kamal Jha.
He insists that Fireproof is not a political statement. But it is a story that works on another level precisely because of the author's skill in moving the reader beyond the obvious 'shock and awe' of the riots and murders in the backdrop.
Spilling over from Jha's trip to Ahmedabad, a month after the riots, Fireproof is a profoundly human story, and a hard-hitting one, at that.
"In the story, there's a book talking, a watch, a towel, 5,000 things talking because when I went to that Gulbarga Housing Colony, all these things lying there. I just wondered if they could talk and they had a TV camera, what are the stories they could tell us. And I thought, they will not, so let me make something up," says Jha.
The protagonist Mr Jay's complicity, the horrors that befall all the little footnotes, the voices crying out to be heard—all this is something that will definitely stay with the reader.
With the head nurse who gives Mr Jay his baby, burned alive with two other doctors, the girl who's running for her life after seeing what happens to her family, Fireproof is a story that is sure to move you. Bottomline—the faint-of-heart be warned.
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