Hyderabad 1: Fire at the High Court

I went to Hyderabad for the first time ever. The High Court was on fire the morning I landed. The morning after I left, the Chief Minister died in a helicopter crash.

Monday was one of the rainiest days there. The rain started before dawn and had retreated to a drizzle by late morning, when my husband and I drove from the airport to the old city to catch some sight seeing.

My husband’s cellphone rang. “Are you near a television?” a friend demanded. “The High Court is on fire.”

Eerily, we were on the same street, just a block away. We turned our heads right, and there was the fire: the brown onion domes of the stately 93-year-old High Court with black curls of smoke puffing out. There weren’t any fire engines around or police cordons, no signs of sleepy government officials poked into moving with any speed. It just seemed like a normal morning, with cars streaming by on the street outside, while parts of the city’s highest court were into their sixth hour of burning.

The High Court, a magnificent building of pink granite and red sandstone (that now look a drab brown), cost Rs. 2-million when it was built in 1916. Its architect was Vincent Esch, who also supervised the construction of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta.

The next morning’s paper reported that the fire, started by an electrical short circuit, was detected at 4 a.m. by a guard. There were no fire alarms or extinguishers in the building.

Apparently, the fire department had for years been sending reminders to the Court that it needed to comply with fire safety guidelines. The state's highest Court thumbed its nose at them; its business was to dispense law, not follow it.