Lest museums become history

It’s unusual to start a column with a joke, but since this one illustrates the point I want to make. I seek your indulgence. Here goes: “An Indian dies and goes to hell. There he finds that there is a different hell for each country. He goes first to the German hell and asks, ‘What do they do here ’”

He is told, “First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you down on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the German devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day.”

The man does not like the sound of that at all, so he moves on. He checks out the US hell, the Russian hell and many more. He discovers that they are all more or less the same as the German hell.

Then he comes to the Indian hell and finds that there is a very long line of people waiting to get in. Amazed, he asks, “What do they do here ”

He is told, “First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you down on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the Indian devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day.”

“But that is exactly the same as all the other hells — so why are there so many people waiting to get in ”

“That’s because maintenance is so bad that the electric chair does not work, someone has stolen all the nails from the bed, and the devil is a former government servant, so he comes in, signs the register and then goes to the cafeteria.”

When you are struck by events that are tragic and hopeless, you can relieve the pain only by making bad jokes about it. And last week we had the most tragic incident in Delhi brought about by our national chalta hai attitude.

I am referring to the fire that gutted the National Museum of Natural History. Among the hundreds of exhibits that were destroyed were priceless flora and fauna specimens (priceless because they are irreplaceable), a 160 million-year-old fossil of a sauropod’s femur, fossilised eggs of an extinct breed of vultures, a dinosaur skeleton and heaven knows what else. These are now gone forever.

The Delhi fire brigade claims that the premises had no fire clearance, though that is disputed by the building owners. What is not disputed, however, is that when the firemen reached the place, they found that the fire extinguishers on each floor did not work, nor did the motor which would have pumped water from the reservoir installed for the purpose of fire-fighting. As a result, it took 35 fire tenders four hours to control the fire.

How often has one read of similar incidents In older buildings, there are no fire safety measures taken at all. In newer buildings, where installation of fire-fighting equipment is mandatory, the fire extinguishers and the fire hydrants, once in place, are completely forgotten. Does anyone maintain them The answer almost always will be no. Are fire drills ever carried out The answer almost always will be no. Recently in our building, we announced a drill on a Sunday when most people would be at home. Instructions were handed over to the building’s 110 apartments with details of how to respond when the fire alarm went off. When it did, a sum total of six people came down the stairs to the lobby as instructed, all of them managing committee members. Whose safety was involved The residents. So why didn’t they bother at all

Could the museum’s fire have been anticipated As it happens, it was: A scathing 2012 report by the government’s Public Accounts Committee had criticised the poor maintenance of the building. A parliamentary panel too had slammed the ministry of environment and forests (under whose control the museum falls) for its “pathetic functioning”. Incidentally, the minister for environment and forests, Prakash Javadekar, announced that a fire safety audit would now be conducted for all 34 museums under the ministry. The obvious question here is why wasn’t such an audit conducted before the fire That would have pointed out the sorry state of the museum’s fire-fighting equipment.

Ideally, museums should have smoke detectors as well as sprinkler systems, the latter judicially placed so as to offer protection from fire without damaging the exhibits. Hand-held fire extinguishers are useful only to stop a fire when it’s just starting, not to fight a blaze. From newspaper reports at least, it doesn’t seem that the museum had smoke detector or sprinkler systems.

From some reports, it is also learnt that there was some repair work going on in the building and the fire might have started there. This is hardly surprising because workers who have not been made aware of safety precautions, often leave wood, varnish, paint and other inflammable material strewn carelessly around which can be the source of a major conflagration.

It doesn’t necessarily need a cigarette or beedi or match to start a fire: there’s a phenomenon called “spontaneous combustion” which involves paint erupting into flames when environmental temperatures reach particular levels.

This is no comment on the Delhi fire, but a general point: Builders often cut corners when installing fire-fighting equipment and try to get away with as little as possible by greasing the palms of fire brigade authorities who pass the plans. Corruption endangering human lives and priceless treasures It happens all the time.

I will close this column with a news item which appeared in a national newspaper just below the story on the Natural History Museum fire.

At the Nehru Memorial Museum on Teen Murti Marg, which is a high security zone, an exhibit was stolen from one of the rooms and was noticed only when an attendant saw that its glass enclosure had been broken. Although the exhibit has apparently been recovered, what the episode revealed was that the museum does not have a single CCTV camera. I suppose they will install a surveillance system now.

The writer is a senior journalist