‘We have lost 90% of villagers’: Grief takes over remote Kerala town
A day after twin landslides within a span of three hours rocked Chooralmala and the adjoining settlements of Mundakkai and Attamala, these villages were unrecognisable.
On Wednesday afternoon, PK Ravindran surveyed the sight before him, a mixture of grief and disbelief. The Chooralmala he grew up in was green and pristine with undulating tea estates, the Iruvazhinju river gurgling past. Now, all that was before him was a brown postcard, most of the houses gone, swept away by a river in fury; a village that has ceased to exist. “We lost 90% of the people we knew in this village. It’s like our world has been blanked out. People who were like family, people we met every day for tea, are all gone. I have lost my best friend,” he said.
He watched somberly as army personnel battled the elements to set up a temporary bridge over the river, in a desperate attempt to create a sustainable path to the other side. As he did, he pointed to one section in the distance, now inundated with water.
“There used to be a Shiva temple there. It was quite big. Now, the temple and its priest are both missing. Towards the right, on the banks, there used to be a row of houses, both old and new. All those houses have been washed away. The government school we all studied in has been wrecked, half of its buildings gone. Chooralmala will never be the same again,” the 52-year-old handicrafts businessman said.
A day after twin landslides within a span of three hours rocked Chooralmala and the adjoining settlements of Mundakkai and Attamala, these villages were unrecognisable. The Iruvazhinji river, a tributary of the Chaliyar, once a gentle stream, is now swollen and angry, split into two separate streams. Across its bed, making the trajectory of the water ever more unstable, were strewn large boulders, rocks and tree trunks. Most houses in Chooralmala, a village of around 1,000 people, have simply ceased to exist. Those that remain have sunk into the slushy earth.
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On Wednesday, even as the incessant rain continued, earthmovers were at work around the houses that remained, trying to dig up bodies of those that may be buried within. On Tuesday, relief and rescue had focussed on the injured, officials said. On Wednesday, it was about finding the bodies of the dead. Bijeesh MP, a civil defence volunteer, said, “The possibility of finding people alive now is quite low. We are using earthmovers to break the rubble inside the houses and find bodies.”
Even for those who survived, their lives are now full of haunting memories. Suresh S, who escaped because his house was a little distance away from the river, said, “My phone is filled with voice messages and cries of my friends who sent pleas of help. Their cries haunt me. We helped some people to safety that night. But the river made anything else difficult,” he said.
Twenty kilometres away from the landslide site, at Aster Speciality Hospital Wayanad, 35-year-old Jaseela and her youngest daughter (3) also survived. But among those missing are her husband, two other children and her in-laws. Only the body of one daughter has been recovered. On Wednesday, when the child was buried, Jaseela was asked if she wanted to attend the funeral. She didn’t. “I didn’t want to see her scarred face.”