My mother's story: The day Bombay burned

On April 14, 1944, the SS Fort Stikine caught fire in Mumbai's Victoria Dock when the British Empire was at war with Japan, Germany and Italy. The merchant ship's reckless combination of wartime and commercial cargo – 1,395 tonnes of explosives nestled among flammable items such as raw cotton, oil, sulphur, and timber – was an accident waiting to happen. The fires lasted for days. The massive explosions destroyed homes and killed some 800 people who were nowhere near a war zone. This is the story of my mother, who was then nine years old.

It was around 4 pm on Friday. I had just come home from school after the last day of the term. Our house help had taken the day off, so my mother was doing the laundry. From the terrace of our fifth-floor apartment in Khaand Bazaar, the wholesale sugar market, less than a kilometre from Victoria Dock, I saw huge flames in the distance, on the water in the docks. I ran to tell Ma, and she came to the terrace to look.

Madhubhai, my eldest brother, was making tea. When there was a huge explosion, he dropped the saucepan and rushed towards Ma. On a shelf above the kitchen door were some jars and bottles. Just as he passed, they crashed to the floor, missing him narrowly.

My second brother, Chanderbhai, was about 12 years old. He had just come home from his last exam. He was eating a snack in our aunt Lakshmi Mami's kitchen downstairs. Mami and her house help Pandu were on their terrace, prepping chillis for pickling. When the first explosion went off, a huge chunk of steel from the ship came hurtling across the terrace and sent the chillis flying.

A visitor of Pandu's was sitting on a bench on the terrace. The flying metal piece, almost three feet across, ripped the lapel of his unbuttoned jacket, and flew into the house and out the other side, taking Chanderbhai's chapati with it. It was because of God's mercy that no one was injured.

Chanderbhai rushed upstairs to check on my six-month-old brother, Haresh, who was playing happily. Haresh had just come down with smallpox, and wasn't quarantined yet. Because of the rash, you couldn't hold him close as you'd normally hold a baby. I was terrified by the huge flames, and crying non-stop. My older brothers feared that the Japanese were attacking us. Ma had the presence of mind to put the wet laundry into a bag – we'd need the clothes later. We'd need shoes, too, so she grabbed some and stuffed them in another bag. She filled a container with milk for the baby. She rounded up all of us kids and went downstairs, where my aunt was too terrified to think. Meanwhile the fire kept spreading.

Unfortunately, in her fear, Mami dropped the clothes and shoes somewhere. We went to a sugar warehouse nearby, from where Ma tried to call my father. His office was on Pherozeshah Mehta road, near my third brother Pratapbhai's school. But like our home phone, this one was dead. Just as we were leaving the warehouse, there was another deafening blast, and giant sacks of sugar came tumbling down. We were lucky not to be crushed to death. By now, the flames had reached a chilli warehouse nearby.

Ma decided to go to GeetaGrah (a Bhatia community residential complex), where my father's family lived. The stone building would be fire-safe, and had a wedding hall where we would at least have a place to sit. It was just a 20-minute walk, but we had lost our shoes, and the streets were covered in broken glass. Besides, while dodging falling debris, Madhubhai, Chanderbhai, the baby, and I had got separated from Ma and the others.

While my brothers and I walked, a Muslim gentleman offered Ma and the others a ride in his car. Hindu-Muslim tensions ran high in the mid-1940s. Seeing Ma's fear, the man begged her to trust him, and she accepted his help.

In my father's office, about 2.5km from the dock, the glass panes of the cabins had shattered with the force of the explosions.

My father fetched Pratapbhai from school and went home. Seeing the devastation – our house and my school next door had burned down – he reckoned that only he and Pratapbhai had survived. The two of them headed for GeetaGrah, where, among others similarly rendered homeless, our whole family was miraculously reunited.

We were worried about where to go next, but at least we were all alive and together.