Flood stories retold by UAE-based writer
sharjah — The first-ever literary work inspired by the recent Kerala floods was released on Friday at the Sharjah International Book Fair.
Nohayude Paravakal by UAEbased writer and poet Honey Bhaskaran is a Malayalam novel that tells a love story in the backdrop of the deluge and devastation that hit the south-Indian state of Kerala in August.
“The novel is a tribute to each and every person, who stood against the fury of nature when Kerala was faced the worst flooding in a century. The book is a tribute to an entire’ state’s grit, resilience and community spirit. I felt the best way to document it for the next generation is to put it down in black and white in a book,” Bhaskaran told Khaleej Times.
The novel set in the picturesque hills of Munnar traces the journey of a couple in search of the grave of a British royal woman, who came and settled in Kerala along with her husband. The novel has ample auto-biographical elements, admits the author, as she was part of the Remote Rescue Coordination Team that worked round-the clock from Abu Dhabi to assist in rescue operations when the floods battered different parts of the state and thousands of families remained trapped in their own houses.
The remote rescue team consisting around 70 people, including IT professionals, had worked from make-shift offices in Abu Dhabi, collecting and collating information on victims that was available on various social media platforms. “We had spent sleepless nights sitting in front of a laptop, coordinating rescue on the ground by tracking distress calls from families and individuals trapped in their houses. Though we were miles away, the tragedy was playing right in front of our eyes. With each call for help, we felt the same agony as they did until the victims were moved to safe locations.”
“There was a pregnant woman who was trapped at the rooftop of a house without food for three days. We had dealt with the case of a woman who tied her dead husband’s body to a window sill to stop it from being washed away by the flood waters. There are dozens of such heart-wrenching stories that I have retold in the book through the eyes of the rescue team. Most of the characters in the novel are real people and it is their story,” said Bhaskaran.
Her earlier works include novels ‘Pieta’ and ‘Udal Rashtreeyam,’ and various collections of poems.
The novel is a tribute to each and every person, who stood against the fury of nature when Kerala was faced the worst flooding in a century.” Honey Bhaskaran