The Better India · 17 days ago

Kolkata’s Bipin Ganatra Has Been a Voluntary Firefighter for Five Decades

When Bipin Ganatra was twelve, his brother suffered burns from a kitchen accident and died after a month in intensive care -- a loss that forged a singular purpose in the boy who had witnessed all that pain. For the next fifty years, without formal training or pay, Ganatra became a fixture at Kolkata's fires, rushing from his day job as an electrician whenever news of a blaze reached him, earning such trust from the fire department that officers now consider him one of their own. He keeps over 300 newspaper clippings documenting the fires he's fought, though he brushes past talk of his Padma Shri award to focus on what he calls "the statistics of the lives he saves." His philosophy is disarmingly simple: "Today, the minute people see an accident or a crisis, the first thing they do is click a picture. But how is that helping anyone?"