Arun Kumar Shrivastava

GURUGRAM: Bleeding from the shoulder and pain stabbing at him while he lay immobilised under a giant concrete block in the living room of his house at Chintels Paradiso, Arun Kumar Shrivastava could clearly see Sunita. His wife was barely an arm’s length from him, trapped under another mass of concrete. But there was no way he could reach her. In that fog of pain, shock and pandemonium, he could tell that Sunita wasn’t breathing.
Minutes ago, on February 10, tea had been served and the Shrivastava family at Flat No D 103 of Chintels Paradiso was settling into the living room’s couches for an evening of catching up. On a table sat a plate of rasgullas for the just arrived guest – Sunita’s sister Sujata – as Arun and Sunita waited. Arun had taken half the day off to pick Sujata up from the airport. For his troubles, he had been rewarded with a serving of his favourite fish.
Arun’s phone rang and he had just got up to answer it when the concrete maelstrom hit. The floors of five living rooms vertically above, till the 6th floor, had given way. D-103 was the last in line. The concrete mass that barrelled down ripped their ceiling and landed on Arun and Sunita in the living room (and on Ekta Bhardwaj in D-203, right above them). Sujata, still in the washroom, was unscathed. The cave-in was surgically precise, hollowing out the living rooms but leaving the flats virtually unaffected otherwise.
“Sunita and I had both gone to the airport to receive my sister-in-law Sujata. The Air India flight was two and a half hours late. We reached home around 6pm. Sujata’s luggage was still in the living room (the floors collapsed around 6.30pm),” Arun told TOI on Thursday, just before his discharge from hospital. The 60-year-old bureaucrat was admitted on February 11 morning. Rescuers had worked through the rubble for 16 hours to extract Arun while doctors put him on sedatives and an IV drip to sustain him through the rescue.
All Arun remembers of the moment of the cave-in is a “a very hard blow on my head”, which knocked him out. When he regained consciousness – he wasn’t sure after how long – he felt a heavy weight on his body. “When I opened my eyes, I saw blood on my shoulder. Sunita was under the debris too. I could see her. She was bleeding from the nose. I fell unconscious again and when I regained my senses, a doctor was putting a bandage on my head. I couldn’t move as my leg was trapped. I was wearing a leather shoe and that saved my foot.,” said Arun, insisting even through the pain and confusion, he remained “aware of my surroundings for the entire 16 hours”.
“I knew that Sunita was no more while I was lying there. I felt as if she died and saved everyone. She was perfect. She managed the house, relationships, children, everything. She took care of everyone around her. That day too, she took care of me. Jo khona tha, wo kho chuka (I have lost everything, I have nothing else to lose). A common man’s dreams are simple. We dream about marriage, family and a house. My dreams were shattered. My life changed in a second,” Arun said.
During the rescue operation, the possibility of amputating Arun’s leg was discussed. The rescuers also told him about it. “I had faith that I would come out of it,” he said. “My sister-in-law, who was the only family present at that moment, gave permission for the process, but Dr Virender Yadav (Gurgaon chief medical officer) arrived at the scene and told me there is no need for amputation. I am not fully aware how they took my leg out because I was heavily sedated. I heard clapping and cheering when my leg was freed from the slab,” he said.