The pain and horror of floods

We came to the hospital — my mother and I — fraught with worry and anxiety for a son, a brother critically ill.

Within days along with 37 million odd Keralites, we were facing an even greater calamity. That of our slender sliver of a state, draped on the edge of India’s south-western coast, being steadily lashed by torrential rains resulting in the worst floods in the state since 1924.

We have prayed for years for bountiful rains. For the sake of our crops, our dried-up river beds and wells and for the more pedestrian assurance that come summer we will be spared the irksome ‘power cuts’ that have been a part and parcel of every Keralite’s life.

However, for the past several years the skies emptied up a few weeks after the onset of the South-West monsoon and then seemed to look down at us in a blank stare — a vast barren blue wasteland.

Probably in reparation, the overzealous rain clouds gathered in thick, grimy bunches this June and set about pounding each of our 14 districts with rains as we have never seen before.

We were overjoyed at first. The lush green foliage, the smell of wet earth, the rivers and lakes filling up. Kerala preened. She was undoubtedly at her beautiful best. As one district after another began reporting record rainfall and rising river levels, the state as a whole waited with bated breath for news of whether the Idukki Dam reservoir would open its shutters for the first time in 26 years. The dam project (pun totally unintended!) supports a hydroelectric power station that generates 60 per cent of Kerala’s electricity. Watching the water creeping up towards the red markers etched against the concrete walls of the dam was soon a statewide obsession. There was endless debate and analysis on news shows on whether trial runs were needed, whether the other dams would hold up ... It suddenly dawned on us lay folk that Kerala had 44 rivers that ran across the state to drain into the Arabian Sea, and 42 dams. And all of them were filling up really fast.

Wrath of rains

It was now only a matter of when, and not whether, the shutters would be opened! And the day it did, history was made. All five shutters were up and water gushed down to the delight of a waiting audience

I come from the central district of Thrissur. For weeks we seemed to have escaped the wrath of the rains. Even as community leaders urged people to mobilise help for the other districts — “we have been spared, so that we can rush to their aid,” said a priest in his sermon — the skies grew ominous. For the next 24 hours it poured. With every passing hour we heard of familiar localities and housing colonies falling prey to water’s relentless flow.

In the distance, perched as we were on the ninth floor of our hospital room, we could see paddy fields filling up. Lakes miraculously materialised and houses disappeared underneath. Water that is so often pure blue, clean and frothy now reared its ugly head — thick, and muddy brown sloshing over brick walls and seeping under doors and windows. We count ourselves among the lucky ones. Lucky to be on dry land with food, drinking water and sanitary facilities. We did not experience water lapping around our ankles, and we did not have to wade through knee-deep water to get to a rescue dinghy. We did not see our earthly possessions reduced to a soggy slimy pile of rubbish. We did not go through the ordeal of being stuck on the roof of our house awaiting help for days. We were not reeled up by men in army fatigues framing helicopter doors. Neither did we have to look up with outstretched arms for bags of grain dropping from the sky. For many throughout the state, all they have escaped with are their lives.

Nature has chosen to cast me among others in the role of the bystander.

As we anxiously wait outside the ICU for news of any sign of improvement in my brother’s condition, running to and fro paying bills and fetching medicines, we watch on televisions how mercilessly our tiny state has been mauled.

The media here keeps terming the catastrophe “maha durandam” or “great disaster”! The coinage reminds me of the Palestinians and their great catastrophe of 1948 — the Nakba. And I wonder if 2018 will be a year that I and my people look back upon with as much pain and horror.

■ Maria Elizabeth Kallukaren is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.