Two weeks post Cyclone Ockhi: Coastal villages brim with anger against state govt, hopes of survivors fading fast

Selvi, wife of Kumar Edwards, with her four children outside her home. (Express Photo)

At Kumar Edward’s small two-room house in Poonthura, the mood is understandably somber. As Kumar’s wife Selvi sat on the ground beside a bed in the hall, Nimisha (barely 2 years old), their youngest of four daughters, moved around the house sucking on a tube of Sip-Up, a brand of ice candy popular in Kerala.

“She (Nimisha) may have only one candy, but she shares with everyone,” a relative chimed in with a smile. And true to her word, after a few minutes, Nimisha was offering her elder siblings a share of the candy. “She takes the mobile phone sometimes and puts it to her ear and says her father’s name. We tell her that he (Kumar) has gone to church,” an emotional Sreeja, Selvi’s sister, told the Indian Express.

Kumar (38), is among the 28 men from Poonthura alone who have neither been rescued alive so far nor their bodies retrieved from the choppy waters of the Arabian Sea after Cyclone Ockhi swept through the region. Their families are in a strange state of uncertainty, unsure of whether to wait in hope or resign to the fate that their loved ones may never return. “We have got a framed photograph of him (Kumar) made, but she (Selvi) is not allowing it to be put up on the wall. Entha cheyya (What to do),” sighed Sreeja.

The family is also seething with rage at the state government, complaining how they never received the cyclone warning on time and the manner in which rescue operations were conducted. Last week, thousands of fishermen families marched to the Raj Bhawan in Thiruvananthapuram with a set of demands. “We got the news(warning) on Thursday afternoon,” said Sreeja, a full day after her brother-in-law, the bread-winner of the family, had gone out to sea. “It was raining so hard and winds were so strong that we were scared even sitting inside our houses. So think about those who were out at sea.”

Even as rescue operations by the Navy and the Coast Guard continue at sea, extending as far as the Goa coast, hopes of finding more survivors are fading fast. “We have lost hopes about those who went missing in the small fibre boats. It would be very difficult for them to survive a cyclone like this. Those who have been rescued say they haven’t seen anything like this in their lifetime,” a local church official said.

Locals say if rescue efforts had been stepped up in the immediate backdrop of the cyclone, many, who had gone in small fibre boats, could have been brought back alive. They cite the case of Arogya Das, who reportedly succumbed to death in the first half-hour of a rescue operation undertaken by a bunch of fishermen.

The underlying anger found expression when villages like Vizhinjam and Adimalathura witnessed fierce protests against chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, fisheries minister J Mercykutty Amma, tourism minister Kadakampally Surendran and finance minister Thomas Isaac when they came visiting. With households like Kumar’s bereft of their bread-winners, the road ahead is shrouded with ambivalence. The feeling of exhaustion and fatigue is writ large on the face of Kumar’s wife Selvi who has nothing to say, except that she hopes her husband will return. Even with a government compensation, she is unsure of how to look after her four daughters and her aged in-laws. The sight of her mother-in-law breaking into tears, every now and then, and family members speaking in past tense about how ‘good’ and ‘caring’ Kumar ‘was’ is not making Selvi’s life any easier.

With no major financial support, the family is living on with the assistance provided by the local church, which supplies meals three times a day. Though the state government supplied a week of free ration to all fishermen families, complaints of poor quality of rice are in the air. “Look at this rice. There are so many worms. How can we give such rice to our children? What if they get sick?” asked Sreeja. “The government should offer Selvi a job. With monetary compensation, she cannot be expected to bring up four daughters.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visitng the cylone Ockhi affected regions and will meet the surviors and victims on Tuesday.

‘God has taken my child back’

Barely two kilometres from Kumar’s home, another family has been spending the last few days in deep agony. Unlike Kumar’s ‘status’, this family has somewhat of a reason to gain closure. 16-year-old Vineesh, who was always fond of the sea and has been going out to fish for two years now, left the coast on November 29 with two of his colleagues, Sabu and Muthappan. But the boat in which he set out for was reported to have sunk when the cyclone shook the sea, according to the testimony of a fisherman who was rescued later.

Vineesh’s body has not been retrieved yet, his father did not seem hopeful of his son’s return. (Express Photo)

“We heard that when Muthappan was later rescued by a bigger boat, a huge wave swept Sabu and Vineesh away. Muthappan, who is recuperating in hospital, told one of my relatives that he saw Vineesh going under the water,” said Stevin, Vineesh’s elder brother. Though Vineesh’s body has not been retrieved yet, his father did not seem hopeful of his son’s return. “See, I don’t have one kidney. For a few years now, I have not been keeping well,” said Vincent, showing the tiny stitches on his stomach. “He (Vineesh) used to go into sea thinking about our problems. Now, God has taken my child back,” he said in a trembling voice.

Stevin, meanwhile, has two younger brothers at school and an ailing father to look after. He does not like to talk about his mother, who had abandoned them eight years ago. To the question of what the road ahead looks like, Stevin stared with a long silence and shook his head. “I am trying to look for a job somewhere, maybe abroad,” he said. Lily, who runs a computer shop in Poonthura, mourned his death. “Bhayangara dhairyam ulla kutty aayirunnu (He was a fearless child.) He would often come to my computer shop to play games,” said Lily.

Of livelihoods and mounting debts

A village, as equally affected by the cyclone as Poonthura, is Adimalathura, thirty kilometres from the state capital of Thiruvananthapuram. Last week, sitting on its coast were hundreds of small fibre boats owned by fishermen as they sat at home waiting for the situation to become normal. Nearly 20 people from Adimalathura are reported to be still missing at sea with chances of finding them alive extremely bleak.

Rosily, who underwent a recent liver surgery, sat in front of the local church under a white canopy to pray for her missing son Kiran (19). She said her son started going out to sea after dropping out of school due to financial constraints at home. “I have not been going to the doctor after he left. Whatever he (Kiran) earned by going out to sea, we used to pay off interest on our loan,” the grieving mother said. Her daughter, Preethi told the Indian Express that she hoped her brother would return even though a rescued fisherman testified to seeing Kiran drown in sea. With his body yet to be found, the family is clinging on to a glimmer of hope.

But the locals believe that it is pragmatically foolish to wait for a miracle.

“I met my child’s godfather Benziga at the hospital who was rescued from sea. He spoke of the fate to see others dying in front of him without being able to help. And he just came out of cancer,” said Josh, who runs an auto rickshaw. “At this point, we are not waiting for anyone to come back. We are only waiting for their bodies to be retrieved,” he added.