‘My hands are still shaking’: Dancer Kristina recounts Goa nightclub horror

PANAJI: Kristina, a Kazakh belly dancer, was mid-performance when the music at Birch nightclub was replaced by an alarm. In that disorienting moment, she couldn’t comprehend what had happened. Then came the screams, the rush toward the exit, and the realisation that fire had engulfed the nightclub.Her survival hinged on a single intervention. Instinct drove her towards the green room to grab her belongings, but a quick-thinking crew member stopped her. “Don’t go there,” said the crew member. Those seconds of redirection saved her life.Hours later, trembling in her own home, Kristina held her daughter close. “When I came home and hugged my daughter, I was thankful to be alive,” she said in an emotional interaction with India Today, her voice still breaking. “My team is safe. The musicians are safe.”But the trauma of those moments remains raw. “The fire started during my performance because of a short circuit. I was shocked. The music suddenly stopped, and I didn’t understand what happened. I started looking for the exit,” she said. “I was just crying, my head was shaking. My hands are still shaking.”While Kristina and her team escaped, 25 young workers—most of them migrant labourers—did not. Their families now wait outside the morgue, holding photographs of children who will never come home. “People started running towards the exit,” she said in the televised interview.