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Lost in the deluge

When the first rays of the sun began to warm the earth after a week’s incessant rains, Puthuvelil Manoharan thought he would salvage the prized documents from his tiny dwelling in marshy Alappuzha.

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The floods have ruptured the lives of people of all social classes and brought them under the same roof 

When the first rays of the sun began to warm the earth after a week’s incessant rains, Puthuvelil Manoharan thought he would salvage the prized documents from his tiny dwelling in marshy Alappuzha. That was on August 20, just as the state showed signs of return to normalcy, even as relief camps continued to report thick attendance. Sexagenarian Manoharan of Pallathuruthy Chungam was himself among the displaced — in one such shelter at a government school. From there, he made a quick trip to his suburban house, took out the papers proving his ownership of the property and spread them on the courtyard to dry.

That provided a healing effect to Manoharan, sporting a grey stubble and an ochre mundu around his thin waist. His act spoke of perseverance, quite unlike the case with  K Rocky. At 68, the casual labourer from Varapuzha, 70 km up the coast, committed suicide. Like Manoharan, this family man from the neighbouring Ernakulam district, too, was being put in a shelter camp close to his home, 25 km north of Kochi. Rocky, too, had taken a break from the public shelter; he even undertook the lone mission to clean up his house where waters had just drained, leaving muck and dirt. Into the night of the same day, when Manoharan was back in the camp, Rocky chose to hang himself from the ceiling of his house.

Rocky’s wasn’t the sole suicide in post-flood Kerala’s picture of devastation. Only the previous day, a teenager who was planning to pursue a course in ITI, ended up taking own life in an unplanned sortie to home from his relief camp upstate. R Kailash (19) of Karanthur in the Kozhikode district had stumbled upon his Class XII certificates — all damaged. Between Ernakulam and Kozhikode districts, a place near Thrissur, too, reported a case of suicide for similar reasons, two days before Kailash’s.

Back to the Alappuzha district, a woman, least keen on spelling out her name, kept wailing in Chengannur that had four villages around the city fully submerged in water. The middle-aged had lost all her identity cards, including Aadhaar, but nowhere gave the impression that she would take her own life.

People vary in attitudes when it comes to facing crunch situations. Some just crack; others somehow pull on. A third category faces the crisis boldly, even turn out to be motivators. Their ilk holds particular significance to 2018 Kerala, where floods ruptured the lives of people from all classes.

So, in the commercial city of Kochi that houses the state’s high court, a team of lawyers was among those who manually helped unloading sugar and peas in sacks from lorries to those in relief camps. Ernakulam District Legal Service Authority M M Basheer led the volunteers when he felt head-load workers were needed. In the hilly tracts of Wayanad bordering Karnataka in Kerala’s northeast, two IAS officers were among the relief operators carrying bags of sugar. M G Rajamanikyam, in charge of the district’s relief operations, was joined in the mission by sub-collector N S K Umesh. In Idukki, another hilly terrain by the Western Ghats, district collector Jeevan Babu served food to people at a local relief camp.

The state has seldom been a society that has seen such a major and widespread  calamity since its formation (in 1956) that acts as a leveller across the strata. Privacy, which is a pronounced feature of the Malayalis, went for a toss. Shelter camps had people of all social classes brought under the same roof. Some of them had slept in plush air-conditioned rooms only the previous night, and were now sharing space with families that were not even used to concrete walls.

Those rescued in highly dangerous situations included religious leaders, politicians and even film personalities. It was fishermen in motorised country-boats, for instance, who saved National Award-winning actor Salim Kumar (49) after he alerted on social media that his house at Paravur near Aluva was sinking. His colleague in the industry, Mallika Sukumaran (incidentally mother of star actor Prithviraj), was moved out from her bungalow in a huge bronze vat, while it was a rubber boat that helped Congress veteran V M Sudheeran, the PCC chief. In Pathanamthitta’s Kozhenchery, Marthoma Church metropolitan Philipose Mar Chrysostum, 101, had to be shifted to a hospital from his residence on the bank of the Pampa.

At Aluva, Deepa Gopinathan is back in her Desom home after the Periyar waters receded last week. The homemaker says, when she, her husband and two sons reunited after a five-day split in the deluge, they had to kill 35 snakes on day one. There is danger lurking everywhere.


387 persons killed 

40,000  marooned people rescued

10,28,000 persons had to live in 3,275 relief camps

2,344.84mm Against a normal 1,649.3 mm total rainfall 

771mm 2.5 times above average rainfall

Worst-hit villages Chalakudy in Thrissur, Pandalam in Pathanamthitta, four villages around Chengannur in Alappuzh and Ernakulam 

39 major dams opened shutters. 12 of 14 districts on high alert

41 rivers flowed above the danger mark at one stage

Rs 21,000cr total estimated loss

134 bridges affected

8,20,000 km roads in interior belts damaged

7-km wide metro rail flowed along the Aluva town end of Kochi 
International airport at Kochi closed for a fortnight 

42,000 ha farmland lost 

36,000 houses fell prey to the waters

Rescue teams at work

60 Navy

70 Army

25 helicopters

58  NDRF

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