On August 15, when the nation was celebrating yet another Independence Day, Kerala was fighting a battle in which there could have been only one winner – nature.
The roar of swollen rivers punctuated by the sound of rain that lashed mercilessly was a prelude to the devastating deluge that was to follow.
The residents of the villages dotting the banks of the Pampa, Manimala, and Achencoil stood rooted as the rivers marauded their homes, farms and whatever they had, leaving nothing but devastation in their wake.
My home on the banks of the Manimala had seen floods earlier too. But this was nothing like me and my family had bargained for.
Call it premonition or gut feeling, I continued giving updates for The Hindu flood alerts even while making arrangements to shift upstairs as floodwaters entered our home.
My primary concern was my 90-year-old mother. Me, my wife and daughter waded through the waters and took my mother upstairs and set up a temporary kitchen there. I and my cousin had taken our cars and parked it along the newly constructed bridge across the Pampa on MC Road the previous evening.
As night set in, the water rose alarmingly. Power had gone off long ago and mobile phones, our only link with the outside world, were running out. Landline phones too were dead as flood waters did not spare the telephone exchange in our village either.
We spent the night hoping that things would be better the next morning. However, we woke up to a dark dawn with the rain showing no sign of relent. The water had risen to a greater height. It was then we realised that we were marooned and in for a long haul.
We harvested rainwater for cooking, drinking and domestic chores. But two days into our ordeal, we started to feel the pinch as food was running out. We knew it would take a great deal of grit to survive until help arrived.
There was no response to our calls for help as the more thickly populated areas in the lower reaches of the Manimala had been completely inundated by then.
Help arrives
Finally on the fourth day, a Fire and Rescue Force team led by Bijil from Neyyattinkara in Thiruvananthapuram came to our rescue. He carefully lifted my bed-ridden mother and carried her to a rescue boat. We too followed ending our ordeal and took refuge in our relative’s house at Ezhumattoor, a hilly terrain near Mallappally.
Now as the water recedes, all of us who have been at the receiving end of the forces of nature are picking up our lives from whatever remains in our homes.
Experts may term it a sad episode in the history of Kerala and may blame it on the failure of the State in dam water management and unscientific land conversions. But for the common man, having lost everything that they possess, it is a life-changing experience.