“Humanity is the ultimate lesson and everything else lies beneath it. Yet there is a glaring lack of such lessons in society. Justice is the main weapon on the life of the learned. If you look around at the present circumstances and compare people to the meaning of good education, doubts arise as to whether good education exists at all.” Rabindranath Tagore expressed this sentiment so very long ago. ‘Humanity’ is such an incongruous word, you can never tell when and how it pops up.

‘Humanity’ is derived from the Latin word ‘humanitas’ and is intractably linked to the ‘humankind’. This word has been hammering my mind ever since the fatal Thursday night that those ill-fated people chose to go to Green Cozy Cottage in Bailey Road for the ‘only form of recreation’ in this city, that is, to spend time and share a meal with friends and family.

It may have been named ‘Cottage’, but it was a multi-storey building. 

The owners happily erected the building, but had no qualms to ignore the rules and regulations and to use the power of their wealth to make this into a purgatory. Till the latest count, 46 lives have been sacrificed to the inferno of their greed. Those who died there were humans, those who took their lives were human too. What irony of fate!

If both of these groups were human, then where has humanity gone? Has a small group of people used an eraser to erase the word ‘humanity’ from their lives and their identity? After this incident, the answer is an emphatic ‘yes’. They may have all sorts of academic degrees, millions of taka, unparalleled power, but they have no humanity.

Some years back, Ratan Tata was asked a question: Despite the Tata Group being so old and big, how come it is not the wealthiest? In reply he said that when they took up any enterprise, they thought about everyone in society, not just the profits. And as for those owning immeasurably massive amounts of wealth, they only thought of profit.

That is why Tata were entrepreneurs, the others were just businessmen. In our country, the latter seem to be the majority. We do no attach humanity or social welfare in any way to business. Whether small or big, this applies to everyone.

Of course we can’t just sit back and blame the building owners and the businessmen. After the fire at Green Cozy Cottage, just look at the stream of protestations from various government agencies and regulatory bodies. They are saying, no permission had been given, that notices of warning had been issued, blah, blah, blah. Fine; then tell us what action you took when they failed to heed your warnings and the regulations.

So many lives have been lost due mainly to negligence of the owners of the building and the authorities who approved such a faulty building design and issued licence to them.

All of them have to be made liable for the tragic incident. From the entrance of the building, the fire exit and the main stairs - everything was so narrow that getting out of the building was almost impossible.

The entire building was enclosed, having no normal ventilation.

Moreover, there was no space for light and air to enter the rooms where the restaurants were housed. And all these had been going on clearly violating laws.  

We think there is no need for any more elaboration of the ground reality. Now the question is whether the persons directly or indirectly involved in the deaths of so many lives will be held responsible and punished accordingly. That’s a million dollar question.

There is no choice but to leave the answer to posterity. The Bailey Road incident has made it clear that the number of humans devoid of humanity is on a steady rise. This cannot be dismissed as a mere accident.

For the sake of argument it can be said that even with all compliance in place, a fire can break out. But so many people would not have died. In this incident, most of the people died of suffocation, breathing in excessive carbon monoxide and scorching their windpipe. Had there been wide stairs, open spaces, ventilation, most of them would have survived.

We have the memory of a gold fish. The very next day we sit in similarly risky restaurants airing our reactions on social media. To my knowledge, after the Bailey Road incident there hasn’t been the slightest drop in the burgeoning number of unplanned (perhaps unapproved too) restaurants jammed into multi-storey buildings. Unless we bell the cat, who will? We may go viral on social media with impressive statements and scathing criticism of others, but it makes not the slightest difference.

This life is yours. It is your responsibility to protect it. As for those to whom you want to hand over this responsibility, they have long ago sold their humanity to greed, their souls to servitude.
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The writer is Executive Editor, Digital Media, Independent
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