NEW DELHI: Beneath a mountain of fallen concrete, a shattered table became a sanctuary where two friends traded words to keep the darkness at bay. Even as the air grew thin and his own limbs went numb, 24-year-old engineer and Indian Engineering Services (IES) aspirant Vishal’s final plea to rescuers was: “Save my friend first.”Speaking to TOI from his bed at AIIMS Trauma Centre, Vishal recounted over three hours of suffocation, agony and uncertainty after the Saidulajab building collapsed as they were eating dinner. “I could hear people screaming from under the rubble,” he said. “But I didn’t know if anyone could hear me.”Vishal, who attends coaching classes nearby and lives in a PG in the neighbourhood, had gone to the mess next door with friends for what would become their final meal together. Two of his friends, Kapil and Nalin, died in the collapse. Vishal, Anuj and Aditya were injured, while another friend, Ashutosh, escaped.“It was around 7.30pm and we were getting ready to leave,” Vishal said. “Mess aunty Parvati came inside and raised an alarm about the collapse. Before we could react, debris started falling all at once. Everything fell in seconds.” The next thing he remembers is darkness.“I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was trapped,” he said. “A table had shielded my upper body, but pillars had crushed my legs. My right leg was buried deep in the debris.”Another pillar crashed near his chest. “After that, I couldn’t move at all,” he said. “Even trying to shift my body was impossible.” Somewhere nearby, his friend Anuj was also trapped.“We kept talking to each other,” Vishal recalled. “We kept saying, ‘stay awake, stay awake.’ Just hearing his voice gave me hope. At one point I told him, ‘ so jaate hain, bachna hoga toh bach jaayenge .’”Desperate to contact someone, he tried to locate a phone. “I couldn’t feel most of my body. I asked Anuj if he could reach his phone, but he said he couldn’t move at all.” Somehow, we kept trying. And when he checked, there was no network,” said Vishal.In and out of consciousness, he lost track of time. “The next thing I remember is waking up to the sound of sirens. It must have been around 9pm. Soon, rescue teams located me.” But locating him was just the beginning. “They first managed to cut and lift the pillar crushing my right leg,” he said. “As they removed the debris, they told me that moving another piece resting on my left leg could be dangerous.”“My mind was fogged,” Vishal added. “Most of my body had already been freed by then,” he said, pausing. “I thought I was definitely going to survive. So I told them, ‘pehle Anuj ko nikalo (save him first)’.”Vishal, like many other witnesses, said that the rescuers lacked resources. “They were doing everything they could,” he said. “But it was clear they were also scrambling for equipment.”Once he had been taken out of the rubble safely, Vishal said he was asked for his name and contact details of his family. “I kept losing consciousness even then. I remember a cop managed to retrieve my phone nearby, while I gave them my details.”Rushed in an ambulance, he said, “reality completely set in when I finally made it to the hospital around 11pm”. He is recovering with multiple fractures, while Anuj remains critical, fighting for his life in the ICU.Standing beside Vishal’s bed, feeding him lunch was his elder sister, Lovely Devi, who rushed to Delhi from Kanpur after being contacted by his friends. His exam is scheduled for January next year.As he clutched a hospital blanket and looked at his heavily bruised and swollen legs, Vishal said the collapse should serve as a wake-up call. “I just want strict action against illegal buildings,” he said. “How many more people have to die before something changes? How many more such incidents will it take before this problem is finally solved?”
