a day ago
Cook who was rolling chapatis, gardener who married recently among Ahmedabad plane crash survivors on ground
Raginiben Shaileshkumar Rajput, 43, one of the 17 cooks at the students' mess of BJ Medical College and Hospital had readied a meal of choli-bataka (beans-potato), rice, dal, and sprouts with buttermilk and salad. She vaguely remembers some 30-40 students who had come to dine on Thursday, when the Air India flight AI-171 crashed shortly after take-off on Thursday, stunning her and the others in the dining hall.
Traumatised and injured, Raginiben was finally discharged on Saturday. Sitting on the first floor of the mess called 'Gaurang' after cooking, she was rolling chapatis when Raginiben suddenly heard a loud noise, she said. 'I was startled by something like a bomb blast. I had no clue what happened. Within seconds, the entire place was filled with choking smoke and dust. I could not see anything. Even my eyes started burning,' Raginiben told The Indian Express Saturday.
'After some time, when something was visible, I ran downstairs but the stairs were blocked by the debris and I fell and hurt my spine,' she added. Besides Raginiben, some staff members of the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital were also injured and are under treatment.
Raginiben has been cooking at this mess for nearly seven years. The mess is operated by the medical students themselves, and each of the 17 women cooks are tasked with cooking for 40-50 students a day and are paid Rs 10 per plate. Sharing the financial burden of running her family of four, Raginiben said that earlier she worked in the hostels inside the main campus of Civil Hospital before shifting to Gaurang mess as the dilapidated hostel blocks A and B were brought down and students shifted to these blocks.
Ajay Parmar, 28, who works as a gardener at the Civil Hospital, got married on May 10. On Thursday, he was on a scooter, heading to his house in Chandkheda for lunch, when he too got injured as the flight crashed.
Parmar's brother Deepakbhai, an autorickshaw driver, was among the firsts to reach the crash site and help in the rescue operations. Little did he know that not too far away from the main site, his younger sibling was among the injured.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Deepakbhai said, 'We recovered around 45 bodies of passengers who were completely charred, and also those from the mess building and nearby. By the time we reached, ambulance and police were already there and the fire brigade vehicles came soon after. Within sometime, I received a call from my mother informing me that Ajay too was admitted at the trauma centre.'
Deepakbhai added: 'When he (Ajay) saw the sudden fireball and thick smoke above, he left his scooter and ran for shelter. But the fireball fell on him, severely burning his legs and hands. He was brought in an ambulance to the Civil Hospital's trauma centre where one of the doctors recognised him and called my mother as my mother does household chores at the doctors' residence.'
Barely 3 km from the crash site, Rajeshbhai Patri, 45, an autorickshaw driver from Ahmedabad's Saraspur area, was waiting for passengers like he did any other normal afternoon when tragedy struck. Currently admitted to the Civil Hospital for chest injuries, Rajeshbhai, who has been driving an autorickshaw for 25 years, was among the fortunate few who survived the AI-171 crash.
His son Tusharbhai, 22, said: 'He was sitting in his parked autorickshaw along the wall near the boys' hostel when he suddenly heard a loud noise from the aircraft flying overhead. When he noticed that something was amiss, he started running for shelter. It was then that huge concrete parts hit his chest.'
As Rajeshbhai's mobile phone remained in the autorickshaw, the family came to know about his plight when they received a call from a stranger around 2 pm, informing them that he had been taken to the Civil Hospital in an ambulance. Still in trauma, he is barely speaking, Tushar said.
