Quiet Steadiness

The fire broke out at 3:30 am in the morning.

By the time we understood what was happening, smoke had already begun its quiet takeover—curling into stairwells, slipping beneath doors, rising without urgency but with intent. We live on the seventeenth floor. The fire was on the tenth.

It didn’t matter.

Smoke does not care for distance.

By 4 am, the building was awake in the way buildings never wish to be—voices layered with fear, hurried footsteps, doors opening and closing too quickly. We moved toward the terrace. Not in chaos, not in panic. Dawn was only beginning to show itself, pale and undecided, as if even the sky hadn’t yet chosen how much light to offer.

The fire brigade arrived around 4:15 am. But the people in society had already fought it bravely, already watered it down to secure their neighbours.

Two people were severely burnt.
Most of us survived.

By then, panic had already made its rounds.

The tenth floor turned black—walls, ceilings, corridors reduced to soot and shadow. Damage crept upward and downward, staining parts of the ninth and eleventh floors too. On the tenth, doors burned completely. Not cracked. Not scarred.

Gone.

The strange mercy was that the fire didn’t enter the houses themselves. It stopped at the threshold, as if it had already taken enough.

Electricity was cut off. The building fell into a stunned, unnatural silence.

Even by evening, the smell of burning refused to leave. It lingered—thick, stubborn—settling into fabric, hair, breath. We were asked to evacuate until further notice. So we left, carrying only what was necessary, moving into another house we have. We returned a day later. Many others didn’t.

Power came back in fragments. Fans and lights only. No refrigerator. No geyser. No washing machine. No television. The systems were still being examined—cables, ducts, places no one thinks about until something fails.

For the next few days, we finished whatever food remained in the refrigerator. Clothes were unwashed. Water was heated on gas.

The lift was out of service. Water had entered the system while firefighters checked the sprinklers—sprinklers that hadn’t worked when the fire began.

So we walked.

Seventeen floors down. Seventeen floors up. The lift, when it functioned, was used sparingly—mostly for coming back up. Going down became routine.

Yesterday, the lift was crowded. People waiting. Time stretching. I could have stood there. But I didn’t.

I chose the stairs.

Between the ninth and eleventh floors, the smell returned. Still there. Burnt. Sharp. Unmistakable. It caught in my throat and made me cough. I slowed for a moment.

Then I continued climbing.

All seventeen floors.

What stayed with me through all of this wasn’t fear.

It was the absence of it.

I realized that in moments of emergency, I almost never panic. I become calm. Steady. Rational. It isn’t something I practice consciously—it arrives on its own. Perhaps it’s the Scout and Guide days. Perhaps karate. Perhaps years of living with health issues that demanded endurance. Or perhaps it’s something older—something quietly wired deep inside.

Or maybe it’s simply how I am made.

Sometimes steadiness reveals itself only after everything else falls away.

While panic echoed around me—during the fire, after it, in the days that followed—I remained centered. Not detached. Not numb. Just present. Able to respond without being consumed by reaction.

When life strips away comfort, clarity often remains, with a quiet steadiness.

There are moments when life strips everything away—electricity, convenience, routine—and what remains is not terror, but clarity. A body that knows how to move. A mind that stays where it is needed.

And sometimes, in the quiet aftermath, that realization is enough.

To notice the steadiness.
To acknowledge it.
To carry it forward.

Written by Juilee Parag Parkhi