The
boat wound its way over the water cautiously, the men at the helm prodding the
depths to see if we had enough clearance from the creek floor. I found it
strange that there was so little water in the creek , when barely 36 hours
prior, it was said that the ocean itself had swept inland, inundating
everything in its path. It was bizarre how all the water had simply vanished;
as if the ocean, like a criminal retreating from his scene of crime had tried
to make sure it did not leave behind any incriminating evidence. But it had failed, for evidence lay strewn around aplenty: carcasses lying on the creek banks, floating in the water, filling the air with the stench of rotting flesh........
It
was October 1999 and coastal Odisha had just been ravaged by the Super Cyclone.
I had arrived in Cuttack the morning prior and had been to Paradip the same
night. I had found the port town in complete darkness. However, unlike the dark of
a normal night, when though night, some light is always perceptible, whether it
be the light from homes, shops or streets or the light of the moon and if not
that, then at least the faint light of the stars, this darkness was absolute,
as if light had died that night in Paradip. And it was not just light that was
absent; there seemed to be a complete absence of sound too. It was deathly dark
and deathly quiet.
The
vehicle lights illuminated the long empty stretch of a road ahead but beyond
the limited reach of the headlights, there was absolute blackness and it seemed
to me as if we were driving over a road floating in space. The areas on either
side were ostensibly villages and fields, had been that is; now they were only
vast shallow pools of salt water that glimmered eerily when the headlights
shone on them. Slowly as my eyes got used to the darkness, I realised that the
highway was not really empty. Rather it was full, teeming with people who with
their homes having been washed away, had sought shelter in the only high ground
available to them, the highway. It was a sea of humanity that was camping that night on
the both sides of the highway. But as I said before, it was a sea of humanity
rendered dumb with shock and despair. A few policemen standing guard approached
our vehicle and having reassured themselves that we were not some highway robbers,
advised us to go back: “You never know when these people might attack,” they
said, explaining further, “You see, there is no food and water here!”
That
was yesterday. Today we were on our way to Erasama, said to be the worst
affected. As we drove through the block, I realized that Erasama had been in
one word, flattened. Nothing with height greater than a foot or two was
standing upright, neither homes, nor trees nor electric poles. Only the coconut
trees stood upright, that is, if you can call being ripped bare of all green
from your branches and bent at a demeaning obtuse angle ‘upright’! As far as
eye could see nothing ‘stood’, only empty ochre fields which lay drying in the
sun, covered with dirty brine water and the rows of bare coconut tree trunks,
all bent uniformly in a single direction as if forced to pay obeisance to the
sea and the wind..... And the stench...........!
It was just as our Man-in-Charge, in a moment of utter horror had described: “...an
all pervading stench of death.....!” We found bodies everywhere, in the fields, on
the roads, in the creek.....! In the water, the bodies floated back up and head
immersed, bloated into grotesque shapes that defied description. The process of
rot was so quick and so unforgiving that many times we were unable to even
distinguish whether the corpse was that of an animal or a human being.
And
so we went floating down the Hansua, a former creek now turned into a large reeking
nullah with knee deep water and floating corpses; our goal to reach food, water
and medical aid to the villages situated right on the sea shore, they being the
worst hit and the most difficult to access. We sailed daily, our boat laden
with relief material sent from all over the country: sacks of rice, blankets, clothes
both old and new, and of course medicines. We even had packets of milk that we would
ourselves buy from the Cuttack bazaar. We did this for nearly the better half of
a month, every single day without fail. And so our routine became fixed: wake
up at five, rush to the waiting vehicles, then the long dusty breathless drive
on empty roads (and empty stomachs for who would prepare breakfast at that
unearthly hour!) to the banks of the Hansua, load supplies rapidly onto the boat,
set sail, reach a village or what was left of it , dock on the banks, go
ashore, distribute the food and clothes, set up a make-shift dispensary cum
clinic and see patients by the hundreds. People rendered ill or injured by the
cyclone itself were minimal for the storm had been ruthless; killing
mercilessly, taking no prisoners. Those who had to die were already dead now,
their nameless bodies rotting in the fields and gullies; those who survived
carried only minimal physical scars, may be the odd sprained foot or abrasion,
or arm muscles stiffened by cramps bought on by clasping on to a tree trunk for
eight hours straight as the ocean waters swept them, hundreds of miles from
their homes and beds. As for the scars on the mind, there was no time to tend
to those. I would get hundreds of patients at each stop, most of them routine
illnesses unrelated to the cyclone. In these villages where in normal times
there was no medical setup, no doctor, not even a pharmacy, to have a doctor
come to your doorstep bringing free medicines was a novelty and most of them
gathered simply to watch me work. The moment we landed I would be surrounded by
people, few of them actually in need of medical aid, others simply gathering to
watch as there was nothing else to do, no fields to tend to, no boats with
which to go fishing, no food to cook, no firewood to light the kitchen fire,
and for some no family member left to feed.
Because
we came almost every day, soon the survivors in these villages came to
recognise us well. At first we were treated as messiahs, life savers,
deliverers...but as the days passed we degenerated into being only
providers....It was as if the entire onus of ensuring their survival had been
transferred to those carrying out relief work. A kind of apathy had set in over
the people, a lethargy probably brought on by what I now, thinking back ascribe
to PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The virtue of initiative had dried up
in these people. All they did throughout the day was to wait for the relief
boats to bring them food. They did nothing else, at times even their make-shift
shelters had to be erected by the relief teams. Things came to such a pass that
one morning when we landed at a village, we found a human corpse lying on the Hansua’s
banks, right there at the point where the relief boats docked. When we asked
the villagers about it, they calmly replied, “Sarkar dispose karegi....!” For
our Man-in-Charge, that was the last straw. He gave an ultimatum to the
villagers that unless they disposed off their dead fittingly, no relief sack
would be offloaded from the boat that day. Hearing this, a young boy broke away
from the crowd, got a piece of rope, tied it to the ankle of the corpse and
dragging it to about 50 feet away from us, shoved it nonchalantly into the
waters of the Hansua. He returned and without a word took his place at the line
of men gathered to haul the relief material from the boat. Stunned by this blatant apathy, our Man-in-Charge could do little and resignedly issued orders to
offload the relief material.
This
happening was kind of a last straw for me too. In the beginning there had been
only the horrors of the aftermath, the endless destruction, the massive loss of
lives, the corpse infested waters through which we travelled daily....Though at
first shocked and horrified, because the human mind has such a remarkable
ability to adapt, I was soon so inured that I never gave a second
glance to the next corpse that went floating by the boat. Death had become to
me more commonplace than life. But it was not nature’s cruel hand that was affecting me negatively. It was what people were doing (or not doing) that was eroding my
morale. As the days passed, I became aware of so much happening all around
that was not correct: the unchecked pilferage of relief material, the apathy of
the relief givers and of people in authority, the blatant scramble for publicity
by relief agencies,the ennui afflicting the cyclone survivors.... I found myself turning kind of cynical and losing my youthful
ideas of selfless service... Outwardly I was fine; I worked diligently, did my job
with the same old dedication but inside something had broken. All that
enthusiasm powered by youthful ideas of altruism had receded into the background.
I was not exactly despairing but I was feeling what one could call a lack of
hope, hope for the survivors, for Erasama and for humanity in general. And it
was probably the same for all of us in the team.
It
was in this frame of mind that we landed on Dohibor. Outwardly this village was
the same as any other, brown saltwater filled fields, headless bent coconut
trees, total absence of human dwellings and rows upon rows of expectant people
lines up on the Hansua’s banks....But as we landed and begun our work, we felt
a difference, subtle at first, then as the day worn on, more marked. Though
this village had been affected as badly as any other by the cyclone, the people,
for some unexplained reason had not lost their initiative. This was manifest at
every step of the way; how they had organised themselves into neat shelters
which they had erected on their own, the orderly lines of people queuing up for
relief supplies, the efforts to secure clean drinking water by utilising our
chlorination kits, absence of unclaimed
dead bodies which I presumed they had disposed of properly all on their own,
the orderliness and the organised community effort in the midst of all that chaos,
loss and scarcity...and to surpass it all, an aura of positivity which I could
not for the life of me understand how they managed to wear in the face of so
much destruction and loss.
And
that late afternoon, as we sailed back from Dohibor, I saw on the Hansua,
hundreds of pale yellow butterflies hovering over the water. I do not know what
these creatures of colour and sunshine were doing over that reeking creek of death but they became a symbol of sorts for me, a symbol of the faith in
humanity that the villagers of the tiny hamlet of Dohibor had rekindled in me.
