What lies in an afternoon? A few desperate phone calls, corridors swallowed by thick black smoke, shattered windowpanes, and lives trapped inside rooms that had seemed utterly ordinary only minutes earlier. Imagining death by burning is not easy. Many find a grim comfort in believing that smoke suffocated the victims before the fire reached them.
In a country where absurdity often hides in plain sight, sudden death does not always arrive with the spectacle of a flood, an earthquake or a terrorist attack. Sometimes it begins with a suspected short circuit in an air-conditioning unit. Sometimes it travels silently through faulty wiring, combustible material and neglected safeguards before announcing itself as smoke. It creeps up staircases, enters classrooms and offices, and is never far from private homes. All this can induce anxiety. Sometimes it simply extinguishes lives, ends possibilities in a blink, and turns an ordinary day into an inferno in broad daylight.
