I’d do it all over again

ALTHOUGH he was badly burnt while braving a raging fire to save his mother and crippled brother six days before, Chabilal Boodram said Thursday he would do it all over again. Wincing in pain under a net at San Fernando General Hospital, Boodram quipped, “I would do nothing differently. I will give my life for my family.” Crippled brother, Narine, 40, who also suffered burns, lay on a bed on Ward 7 in front of Boodram. Narine’s house at Lightbourne Road, Bonne Aventure, Gasparillo, caught fire last Saturday, February 12, and Boodram barged into the burning house and pulled out Narine. “I don’t think a hero would have run into that burning house. I would do anything to save a person, once I think I could,” Boodram said.

Boodram, a supervisor with Super Industrial Services Ltd, sustained burns to his face, chest, neck, hands and back. On his hospital bed, he recalled the horrifying ordeal. It was about 3.30 am when Boodram, who lives a short distance away, heard his relatives calling out to him. Boodram said he ran down the hill and saw his parents’ house ablaze. He heard his mother Suminta, 68, shouting for help. Boodram said he ran up the front steps of the burning house and grabbed the front. He pulled and pulled at the gates until the bolts snapped out of the concrete pillars. “I knew that was the only way I could get them out, so I kept pulling it with all my strength until I pulled the bolts from the concrete wall and slide the glass door,” Boodram said.

“I got her out and ran into my brother’s (Narine) bedroom, which was covered in fire and smoke. I did not see him and I called out to him. I did not hear anything,” Boodram said. But as fate would have it, when Boodram rushed out of the bedroom, he saw crippled Narine lying on the floor between the doorway and the table. “He was not saying anything but he was conscious. As I bent down to pick him up, the ceiling fall on my back. At the time I did not know I was on fire. I was not feeling any pain. I was just focusing on getting him out of the house so I lifted him and ran out,” Boodram said. Boodram put Narine in the arms of his other brother, Mohanlal. “Then I realised I was on fire. My body was burning me. The pieces of wood from the ceiling were stuck to my skin.

I ran up and down the road bawling,” Boodram said. Relatives came out of their homes and began plucking pieces of burning wood from his body. Boodram’s father, Boysie, 68, who was able to escape before the fire engulfed the house, was burnt on his hands. Boodram said he was grateful to God for strength. Although he is in constant pain, Boodram said he exercises his neck and hands 100 times each day. “I do not depend on the nurses to see about me. I bathe myself and walk around,” he added. To his mother, who suffered a heart attack a day after the fire and was warded at the hospital, Boodram offered words of consolation: “Ma, stop worrying. I will get better and I love you very much.”