Odisha’s braveheart couple stays put, survives Phailin fury

When every single person from his village fled for safer pastures, 60-year-old Chandra Giri Tarini and his wife tucked inside their hut and braved the cyclone all night. As fate would have it, they survived the storm even though their hut couldn’t.

Updated on: Oct 15, 2013, 24:52:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Ganjam (Odisha)

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When every single person from his village fled for safer pastures, 60-year-old Chandra Giri Tarini and his wife tucked inside their hut and braved the cyclone all night. As fate would have it, they survived the storm even though their hut couldn’t.

Chandra-Giri-Tarini-and-his-wife-Shanti-braved-Phailin-and-came-out-of-the-rubble-10-hours-after-the-cyclone-struck-Raj-K-Raj-HT-Photo

“Maine socha marna to ha hi, to ghar main kaun na marun (I thought I have to die then why not die in my home),” Tarini told HT, while hugging his wife of 39 years Shanti, who was by his side when Phailin struck on the night of October 12.

Everyone in his New Podampeta village in Ganjam district (150 kms from Bhubaneshwar) — the epicentre of cyclone Phailin — asked him to move to a safe location, but he paid no heed.

As the village doesn’t have proper roads, the relief teams didn’t come to take them to shelter homes. The villagers had then decided to take shelter on the other side of a hill but Tarini expressed his inability to climb the steep hill and preferred to stay back.

“The wind was wild,” Taini said, while pointing towards the blown off roof of his collapsed hut. “First the roof flew off. As the wind speed increased the walls of my hut started to shake. After some time, they collapsed on us,” he said.

The couple remained buried under the debris of their house for almost five hours and thought they would die. Next morning, when the first rays of the sun beamed through his ravaged home, Tarini somehow lifted himself and his wife out from the rubble.

Recalling the night, Tarini who looks much older than his age, described the noise of the storm like a “tiger’s roar”. “The sound echoed in my ears. I have never seen or heard something like that before in my life,” he said thanking God for saving his life.

What they saw next was Phailin’s devastation. All the houses (about 100) in the village were grazed to the ground and were in deep water. “I was able to see just a few bamboo sticks floating. Everything else was gone,” he said.

A little later other villagers descended from the hill top. “I caught a strong tree, closed my eyes and just prayed,” said 45- year-old L Mangri, a resident of the village.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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