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Disasters, they say, come in 3 seconds. But the resilient Kamal Haasan seems to have crossed all the outer limits of his disaster quota. On Saturday morning, the actor-filmmaker-thinker-atheist’s bungalow in Alwarpet, Chennai caught fire.
Kamal had a narrow escape. But his home is badly burnt, though not irreparable. Hours after being whisked away to safety with his pets, Kamal Haasan exclusively speaks about the mishap.
I think it was a short circuit in a refrigerator in the basement that sparked off the fire. I woke up to smoke everywhere in my bedroom in the first floor. I had to climb the stairs to the third floor with my pets and then climb down to the ground floor from there.Kamal Haasan
“I am fine. The advantage of living alone and not having a family is that when a disaster like this happens, you can run out freely and easily and not be responsible for the lives of the loved ones,” says Kamal, trying to make light of a rather grim and scary series of disasters that have stuck his life during the past year.
It started when Kamal had a nasty near-fatal fall which left his foot brutally fractured, an accident that left him incapacitated for nearly a year. Just a few weeks after the accident, his companion for 13 years Gautami decided to quit their relationship. Last month, his brother Chandra Haasan passed away and prior to that Kamal lost his sister-in-law in January.
“The fire is the latest in my impressive list of calamities. Luckily I am able to run again after my fall. Otherwise I may have found it difficult to escape the fire, and I wouldn’t be here to talk to you,” chuckles the man who seems to be adversity’s favourite client.
You can pray for me. I can’t because I don’t know how to.Kamal Haasan
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