Once glittering Stephen Court now a haunted house

KOLKATA - Bits of ash hang in the air, and inside it is pitch dark. It is difficult to imagine that till two days ago, the landmark Stephen Court building here was bustling with life and activity till a devastating fire reduced a portion of it to rubble.

Only the skeletal remains of the top two floors of the eight-storeyed building on Park Street exists after Tuesday’s inferno that has claimed 24 lives, mostly of youngsters, and 10 people are missing.

The only signs of movement inside the century-old building now are due to a handful of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) workers, busy clearing the rubble with shovels and pick axes.

Viewed from the terrace of an adjacent building, the interiors of Stephen Court, built by an Armenian Stephen Arathoon, presents a study in contrast.

A large portion of the top two floors are completely gutted; while another part of the sprawling structure is seemingly untouched by the fire, with indoor plants peeping out of the veranda grills.

Everything inside the damaged portion is burnt - be it the wooden furniture, split air conditioners, refrigerators or electronic gadgets - the black ash float out in the air as testimony.

Till Tuesday afternoon, the landmark edifice on the city’s showpiece Park Street was known by the iconic eateries it housed - Flurys, Peter Cat. Now both are closed. The giant Music World, which drew large crowds daily, mostly youngsters, was also empty.

All around the place were large posters put up by the civic authorities: “Demolition work is undergoing” and “No one is allowed inside”.

Curious onlookers in hundreds gather through the day for a glimpse of the burnt floors, giving the police a harrowing time and leading to massive traffic congestion.

A kitchen worker of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), adjacent to Stephen’s Court, Sambhu, told IANS: “We heard a loud sound at around 1.40 p.m. on Tuesday when we were having lunch… then we heard people screaming inside the building. We came to the terrace and saw a raging fire inside the building. We have seen people jump from the fifth floor and die before our eyes.”

“We saw three women with a child trapped in an air conditioner holder. Then they slowly moved to the other side and were rescued by the firemen,” he said.

Fear and shock still loom large on the faces of all eye witnesses.

One of the newspaper vendors - Gangadhar Pandey - who has his stall across the road, told IANS: “We saw thick smoke coming out of the building. We hurriedly packed our belongings and left the spot.”

A close look of the building reveals poor maintenance. A peep inside shows a network of electrical wires hanging like cobwebs. No fresh coating of paint has been applied for years.

But the second and third floors escaped the fire’s wrath and the well-decorated, but empty residential flats were visible.

One such flat owner complained that KMC and the police are not letting them enter their flats to pick up their belongings.

Lalit Malhotra, an elderly man who has a flat on the second floor of the building, said: “We have our belongings upstairs. Police are not helping us to go to our flats and get our stuff out. They should stop demolition work for half-an-hour at least so that we can get our belongings from our flats.”