There’s a stack of over 300 newspapers in Bipin Ganatra’s Kolkata home. If you ask Bipin (70) to share his heroic efforts in fighting most of Kolkata’s fires, he says all he remembers of his audacious work is braving smoke and flames to save as many lives as he could. 

He doesn’t keep count of the number of fires he has fought, but the newspapers do. In his one-room accommodation, they take up the most space. 

When I ask Bipin to share pictures of his work with me — including the one of him being awarded the Padma Shri in 2017 — he scours the walls and shelves of his home to find them for me. But, the way he sees it, those aren’t the real accolades; the statistics of the lives he saves are. 

‘The day I decided to fight fires.’

“I’ve been living in this house ever since I was born,” Bipin explains. His life started as any other child, told to study hard and follow his dreams. “When I was........

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