‘I still have my hand. So, I still have my life’: A surgeon on surviving the Goa nightclub fire

At 11.45 pm on a warm December night in Goa, Dr Alish Mehta was laughing on a dance floor, celebrating a surprise anniversary trip his wife had planned. Minutes later, the ceiling above him was on fire, the room collapsing into smoke and panic.
By the time he escaped, the right hand that was going to define his life as a surgeon was severely burned and the future he had spent nearly a decade building suddenly felt being cruelly snatched from him.