Diwali is a festival of lights, but it seems to have become more about firecrackers and bursting them than celebrating the festival itself. Mumbai has turned into an accident-prone zone, with over 137 fire incidents reported due to firecrackers. Skyrockets, aerial fireworks and other firecrackers are being lit dangerously close to high-rise buildings.
Mumbai has very little open space, and buildings are located in close proximity to one another, especially in residential areas. Firecrackers, particularly rockets, are entering skyscrapers and landing on balconies of high-rise buildings, triggering fires and causing damage. From suburban areas such as Malad, Goregaon and Borivali to Andheri, people are losing their loved ones, with the festival of lights turning into ashes as homes worth crores are engulfed in flames. Even celebrity residential buildings have not been spared.
Television couple Divyanka Tripathi and Vivek Dahiya, who welcomed twin boys a few months ago, were celebrating their first Diwali with their sons. But little did they know that their Diwali would turn into a nightmare as a fire broke out in one of the flats in their residential building. They had to evacuate their home with their twins, family members and staff and take shelter at a friend’s house.
Although Divyanka and her family are safe, the watchman who died after getting trapped in the building during the fire at Andheri was none other than Dhanpat, the 56-year-old security guard whom Divyanka had introduced to her newborn sons and sought blessings from. A video of the interaction had gone viral at the time.
Sharing the night’s ordeal, Divyanka penned an emotional note mourning the death of her building’s security guard following a devastating fire that broke out in their Mumbai residential building on the night before Diwali and her husband Vivek Dahiya’s birthday.
Taking to Instagram, Divyanka wrote, “Some losses leave behind a silence that never quite goes away.”
She recalled how Dhanpat was among the first people to welcome and bless their twin baby boys when they brought them home. The actress shared that she and Vivek had imagined him watching their boys grow up and spending time with the children in the years to come.
Divyanka revealed that she and her husband had initially planned to step out that evening, but their plans kept getting delayed. As they were home when the fire broke out, they spotted the danger in time and evacuated with their babies, family and staff.
“Vivek and I struggled to accept the news. Even as we took refuge at a friend’s home, we kept hoping, praying that somehow it wasn’t true,” she wrote.
“Dhanpat Uncle, you were never just the guard of our building. You were part of our everyday lives, someone we trusted, someone we had imagined in our children’s tomorrow,” Divyanka added.
“The fire dimmed the lights of our home that Diwali, but the loss of a precious life left a darkness in our hearts that no amount of light can undo,” she wrote, praying for Dhanpat Uncle to rest in peace.
She concluded by saying that when her boys grow older, she and Vivek will tell them about the kind man who welcomed them home with his blessings.
Divyanka Tripathi and Vivek Dahiya got married on July 8, 2016. The couple welcomed their twin sons, Daivik and Vaidvik, on May 26, 2026, after nearly a decade together.