Nineteen people who went out to celebrate Durga Puja on the evening of October 17 never returned home. The crowd crush at Chorbagan in Kolkata left the city grieving and many uncomfortable questions unanswered. Someone I knew was among those who lost their lives, making the tragedy painfully personal. Yet, I wonder why it should take a familiar face for us to feel the full weight of such a tragedy.
India has witnessed this horror before. At religious gatherings, railway stations, sporting celebrations and political rallies, ordinary occasions have repeatedly ended in extraordinary grief. The settings change. The stories of those left behind do not. We mourn, demand answers and promise it must never happen again. Then another crowd gathers, another warning goes unnoticed and another tragedy takes us by ‘surprise’. Are these disasters really so unpredictable? Or have we simply grown accustomed to living dangerously?
What happens when lakhs of people gather in one place? We tend to look at others for reassurance. If everyone is moving towards an entrance, we assume it must be safe. Excitement spreads easily, but so does fear. In a dense crowd, even a small disturbance can trigger confusion. Yet it would be unfair to dismiss such tragedies as mere panic or irrational mob behaviour.
Beyond a certain density, people lose control over their own movements. They may be pushed forward without intending to. Someone who falls may be impossible to reach to help. The pressure of bodies alone can make breathing difficult and turn fatal within minutes. Children, older adults and those with physical limitations are particularly vulnerable.
What appears from outside to be a reckless crowd may actually be hundreds of frightened individuals struggling to stay upright. Understanding this distinction matters. It shifts our attention from blaming people for panicking to asking why they were allowed to become trapped in the first place.
The danger often begins long before the crowd assembles. We have gradually turned public celebrations into competitions for attention. A temple gathering, a cricket victory, a concert or a festival becomes an event that simply cannot be missed. Social media amplifies the excitement. Viral videos, relentless publicity and the fear of being left out draw people in numbers that the venue may never have been designed for.
Organisers celebrate record attendance. We proudly share photographs of overflowing streets. Rarely do we ask whether those thousands can leave as safely as they entered. There is nothing wrong with devotion, celebration or collective joy. The trouble begins when popularity becomes more important than capacity. We have become remarkably good at creating excitement, but not nearly as thoughtful about its consequences.
The warning signs are hardly new. In 2024, more than 120 people died at a religious gathering in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras. The Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj witnessed another deadly crush in 2025. Months later, celebrations following Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s IPL victory claimed 11 lives. Each tragedy brings investigations, public anger and promises of better arrangements.
But how much really changes? Part of the problem lies in how easily we become accustomed to danger. When thousands squeeze through a narrow passage and nothing goes wrong, we call it successful management. The next time, we allow even more people through. Repeated escapes from disaster gradually convince us that the risk was never serious.
Our collective memory is equally short. Today’s outrage becomes tomorrow’s forgotten headline. We remember the death toll but rarely the conditions that made those deaths possible. And so the same mistakes return, often disguised as the excitement of another grand occasion.
Accountability, therefore, cannot end with blaming the crowd or identifying a few individuals after a disaster. In the Chorbagan incident, questions have emerged about crowd regulation, restricted movement and the adequacy of arrangements. These concerns deserve an impartial investigation, not premature conclusions or political point-scoring.
Venues need realistic capacity limits, clearly separated entry and exit routes, trained personnel and reliable ways to monitor crowd density. When conditions become unsafe, organisers must be prepared to stop further entry, however unpopular that decision may be. But responsibility also extends beyond the authorities. Those promoting events must recognise the consequences of drawing enormous crowds into limited spaces.
As visitors, we too must learn to recognise danger, resist the pressure to attend every celebrated event and consider the safety of those around us. None of this excuses failures of planning. Rather, it reminds us that safety cannot remain somebody else’s concern until tragedy strikes.
Ultimately, the measure of a successful gathering should be in how many returned home safely. The families who lost loved ones at Chorbagan and elsewhere cannot be comforted by promises alone. Ours need not be another temporary lesson. We must learn to value restraint as much as enthusiasm, safety as much as spectacle, and human lives above record-breaking crowds.
That change must begin with those who plan these events, but it must also find a place in how we think and behave. I hope the injured recover and the bereaved find the strength to endure what no family should have to face. And I hope we finally learn something that should never have required so many deaths to teach us. A celebration is worth remembering for the joy it brings, not the crowd it invites.
Dr Debanjan Banerjee | Consultant psychiatrist
(Views are personal)