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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...

Fog hits rail traffic on Grand-Trunk route and Howrah-Mumbai route

Train in fog

By Dheeraj Fartode
Rail traffic remained disrupted on Saturday due to heavy fog. Several trains on both Grand-Trunk route and Howrah-Mumbai route are running late by several hours. Gondwana Express is the worst affected train, which is running late 20 hours behind schedule.
A senior railway official said that the impact of fog is most severe on trains moving through north India. 12406 Nizamuddin-Bhusawal Gondawana express is running 20 hours behind schedule. 12724 New Delhi-Hyderabad Andhra Pradesh Express, 12409 Raigarh-H Nizamuddin Gondawana Express, 12723 Hyderabad-New Delhi Andhra Pradesh Express are running late by 10 hours. 02746 Puri-Shree Sai Nagar Special Express, 12616 New Delhi-Chennai Central Express, 12295 Banglore-Patna Sampark Kranti Express,  12296 Patna-Bangalore Sanghamitra Express, 12616 New Delhi-Chennai GT Express are reaching 8 hours late at Nagpur station.
Several other trains which were running late were 16688 Jammu Tawi-Tirunelveli Navyug Express, 12615 Chennai-New Delhi Grand Trunk Express, 12621 Chennai -New Delhi Tamil Nadu Express, 12622 New Delhi-Chennai Tamil Nadu Express, 12540 Lakhnau-Yashvantpur Express, 12722 H Nizamuddin-Vishakhapattanam Dakshin Express, 12834 Howrah-Ahemdabad Express, 12650 H Nizamuddin-Yashvantpur Karnataka Sampark Kranti Express.
Though late run of trains has become routine every year during fog, railways has failed to devise any solution through technology.




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