A FLOOD
I shall
never forget those terrible days when it rained and rained and it seemed that
there was not going to be any end to the heavy downpour. Again, and again I
thought of ancient times and myths and Biblical stories about floods. It seemed
we were all to be wiped out of existence. Everyone said it had not been like
this for many many years, some said thirty-one, others said thirty-seven. The
rain continued unabated. The rivers were heavily swollen by now. All of them
Barito. Mendawai and Kutai overflowed their banks. Thousands of people were
rendered homeless and still there was no likelihood of the deluge coming to an
end.
The first reaction to the rain
was a wild one. Everyone hoped it would soon end. After all this was a heavy
rainfall area and it did rain, so, what was there to worry about? But there
were no intermittent flecks of sun and the heavy downpour resembled nothing
that we had ever seen. Was this a punishment for some lapses, some sins, some
failures? Prayers were of no avail: the rain continued. By the fifth day it was
terrible. Life was very difficult. Everything was badly dislocated. No movement
was possible except in boats. The whole town had become like so many
houseboats. The ground floor of every house had become uninhabitable. People
clustered together in safer places. in higher buildings. Earlier there were
attempts to salvage something but soon the attempts were abandoned and people
scrambled for dear life. The normalcy of life became a long-forgotten thing. No
milk, no regular meals, no vegetables and no communication with the outside
world. No telephone links. no arrival of newspapers! Nothing at all. One only
had one's own tiny self and that was all.
There was reason for concern for
by now dead animals floated in the streets and there was no uncontaminated
drinking water. A few houses also collapsed resulting in loss of life. Food was
air dropped on one or two occasions but the continued bad whether hindered this
aid also. Poorer people who had to depend on their daily earnings were
starving. They had no food and no shelter and no other means of sustenance. The
flood was like a scourge of the gods.
The heavily laden skies seemed to
have shed a great deal of their burden and by the seventh day the sky appeared
a little lighter. Gradually it began clearing up, people heaved sighs of relief.
The rain stopped and the level of the water started receding. It became
possible for rescue teams to arrive and to be organized. It also became
possible for food parcels to be air dropped. People were collected from very
odd places. hovering between life and death, sitting in limited space,
sometimes on treetops, and not getting any nourishment, their limbs were
cramped and their bodies emaciated.
There was every possibility that
there would be an epidemic of cholera. The authorities asked for volunteer
medical teams. the Red Cross Society also organized rescue teams and some
arrived from neighboring areas. Inoculations were given. Other help was also
rendered. But the epidemic did break out and many people died. It was soon
checked and that itself was an achievement.
As most calamities come and recede, so did this. The town slowly crawled back to normalcy. Many lives had been lost and also a great amount of property. It took time to repair the damages done to the machines and to get vehicles on the road and to repair telecommunications but human effort is capable of doing anything and it proved resilient enough to recover from the disaster.