Hussein Bootwala was afraid of heights. Yet, when an explosion shook the four-storey Retiwalla Industrial Estate building in Byculla in central Mumbai on Monday, the 49-year-old ran up from his third floor office to the fourth floor.

As several others raced to the few windows that were not enclosed and jumped off in a desperate bid to save their lives, Bootwala was trapped at a window. Witnesses said he made several attempts to grab a rope and slide down a pipeline, but couldn’t make it. He died due to suffocation and burns.

The grim picture of Bootwala stuck on the window, one leg dangling, as the building was going up in smoke (published in The Indian Express today) was yet another reminder of the tinderboxes that dot Mumbai’s landscape, where fire safety procedures are more an exception rather than the norm.

The fire claimed seven other lives of people working in the industrial estate and injured 66. The Mumbai police booked the owner of an aerosol packaging unit in the building for negligence, with the Fire Department suspecting that the explosion may have occurred there.

Bootwala, a senior manager at a leather accessories manufacturing unit in the building for the past four years, is survived by a 14-year-old daughter and his 48-year-old wife.

“Fate drove him to his death,” said his uncle Firdos Karachiwala. Bootwala had skipped his routine visits to other units of the leather company on Monday to make it to Byculla in time to attend a meeting called by his boss.

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