Chronicles of an improbable journey

1978 Floods

I can vaguely recall a few things during our stay at 4/7 in the year 1977. One of them being my father intently listening to the radio during newscasts. It happened to be a time of significant political turmoil in India. The emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and subsequent power play between Charan Singh and Morarji Desai etc. While I can safely define myself in terms of an absolute political junkie, at five years such events couldn’t have possibly left any political mark on me. Thus I move on to greener pastures of story telling to the year 1978.

One of the events that a number of parents would attach a lot of importance to was an admission to kindergarten in the St. Xavier’s school. I can distinctly remember two things about my admission. One was a white padre, Fr. Wautier who interviewed me and of all things I remember identifying a rabbit on a book of pictures correctly; and doing a simple addition using my fingers – that turned out to be quite correct again. After thirty years of that event, I look back and can’t really accept the unusual amount of importance attached to being Xavier-ite. Nevertheless, enter Kalu, in his worn rickshaw with a small wooden bench tied to the frame of the three wheeled contraption; meant to ferry at least five to six kids to and from school. The man lived in a shanty close to our quarters called Salbagan. I heard that he had died later on from tuberculosis (that may not be true – I have heard from a third person); a fact that I regret now. Had it been today, I would have done everything in my capacity to get him decent health-care.

The one singular incident, that every Bengali would swear about 1978 was the floods. It may not be such an understatement to say, that this was one of the most devastating floods in the recent history of West Bengal. I am trying to pull out from my memory of what I can remember. I am taking some liberty here in the form of dramatization.

An overcast sky during monsoons, meant a slight chance of a joyful day at home; away from the wrath of Mrs. Bourne (our class teacher at kindergarten), who I suspected had some special antipathy towards me. I can now confess without one bit of shame, that all through my tenth grade in St. Xavier’s I was one of the most petrified kids around. This morning was not especially ominous, looking at the sky. It drizzled a bit, as Mom stood in front of the gate while I jumped up on the rickshaw. Its hood was drawn and a blue plastic sewn to the top of the leaking canvas hood tried to protect the kids, somewhat in vain. Kalu, and a lot of other rickshaws pullers toiled through the uphill road from Fine Arts Club to Durgapur Club, his sinewy arms and taut shoulders drenched in the drizzle.

Before the snacks break, it was evident, that the downpour was not an ordinary one. None of us strayed into the field. Classes went on till schedule, and we ran as fast as our five-year-old legs could take us to Kalu, who was waiting under a tree just outside the school boundary. The rain was now getting dumped like hose water, instead of droplets.

Without incident we reached home. After lunch, Mom listened to her daily fare of songs and other stuff on the radio, while I dared to venture out of the front door into the front porch, to the red bench. This was as strict no-no during afternoons, when supposedly kidnappers were let loose all over the place, according to my Mom. But watching the rains, sitting on the step at the front door, was an experience a five year old simply could not pass. Later on it became a habit; I had to sit down there when it rained. I had to daydream. This afternoon, looked special in a sense, that I hadn’t quite seen such ferocious rains before. I could hardly see the front gate, just a few yards away. Something told me that the street in front, had transformed itself into a torrent of water gushing down. The other oddity: water had accumulated on the porch; something that had never happened here before, going by previous rainfalls. At first, I just touched the water a few times with my toes; then the obvious happened: I call it “what the heck lets do it” moment. I stomped and jumped merrily in the ankle deep puddle.

While the living room was one step higher than the porch, the courtyard was a step lower. With my feeble knowledge of complex hydrodynamics at that age, I deduced that there should be some water in the courtyard as well. A part of the courtyard was paved, but a good part wasn’t, so rainwater usually made it to the unpaved soil. I went back into the living room, turned left at the dining area (which also served the purpose of our cycle stand and shoe store on a mite eaten shoe rack). The dining space was the same level at the courtyard, so a natural conclusion would be that this place should accumulate some water as well. Well, it did not and I did not give it much of a thought. But, later on I did find out the answer. It should suffice to say, that neither the courtyard nor the dining space showed signs of flooding.

I then decided to move on with life – that is doing my one favorite chore. Our master bed was a big affair. One edge of the bed stand lined along the outside window of the master bed. I lifted my body in that narrow passage with one hand on the bed frame and the other on the windowsill and swung around; there wasn’t much to goof around with anyways.

When Dad returned, his face seemed quite grim. He had been grim with his affairs at the Steel Plant lately. But this time around it was certainly something more. He was completely drenched. The rain was relentless and hadn’t stopped even momentarily. That something more was a young kid, in a little hand-made dinghy rowing across a landscape that seemed completely flooded, somewhere near the Aksa village, Madaripur subdivision, Faridpur district of now Bangladesh (I have said this before and I am saying again – so what?). His eyes betrayed his composure. The evening news on the radio brought more bad news from all over the state. Thousands had perished, thousands were marooned. It was pure devastation all over the place. Yet Durgapur, sitting on a plateau at about 300 feet above sea level, shouldn’t have to worry under normal circumstances. But, there is the sorrow of Bengal lurking by Durgapur’s southern end. Its fury is well recorded in history - one of the main reasons for the Damodar Valley Corporation to be in existence is to tame the river with dams and barrages. There is a barrage right at Durgapur on the river.

The Durgapur Steel Plant, one of the very few in India then, was right by the banks of upstream Damodar. All the lock gates had been fully opened for the furious river to rush ahead. Rush ahead he (this is strictly not a she) did. Destroying everything in its path as it snaked to meet its destination at the Ganga. I have heard that water was actually flowing over the bridge at the barrage, its sides now very much under threat.

We had locked ourselves up, waiting for things to improve, with constant updates on the radio, in our main bedroom. Electricity had either been shutoff or transformers had blown off somewhere. After the eight o’clock All India Radio News, Baba decided to take a look and have a chat with our neighbors. The first shock came on the step from the bedroom passage to the step that took him down to the dining space. He held a lamp in his hand; and we all heard the first splash. He came back in a hurry, his face showing some signs of terror. “Water is rising, we have to do something”. The two bedrooms were fortunately one level higher than the dining space. A temporary solution was found. Baba had a bed – that can best be described as four wooden legs with four planks nailed to them, from his bachelor days. Ma and Baba pulled that in from the other bedroom and managed to lift it over our master bed. Ma and I were to climb up and sleep on that, with our noses inches away from the fan. Baba, would keep vigil all night.

I vaguely remember, snakes being discussed in hushed tones. But I slept as best as one can under the circumstances. By the time I woke up, our bedroom was ankle deep in water. The rain hadn’t subsided; yet owing to an unknown topographical oddity water never rose higher than that. The one sweet thing about all of it was that school had shut down. So, I dragged myself along the flooded floor, enjoying the “lap-lap” sound of water hitting the walls. I am sure Mom did not get a chance to cook anything for breakfast;

A couple of days later, a small opening was noticed in the foreboding clouds. Our neighbor, Mrs. Gupta waded into our front flooded front lawn, beside the Kamini; my Mom and she, started the usual round of gossip that had waited two full days for the rains. In a few minutes, we heard this big roar from somewhere; me petrified that a huge tsunami was rumbling in from somewhere. Well, that wasn’t it. It was an army helicopter hovering 30 feet over our lawn. A man was perched precariously by its side with a hand held mike – he was waving sacks at us – sacks of food, yelling over the chopper’s roar – “Do you need food supplies?”. Mom and her friend waved them away – we were well stocked. The chopper, veered away.
It took a few more days for the water to come down. Then we heard it from Baba. They had to protect the Steel Mill from flooding and it stood right by the banks of the Damodar. So, the army was brought in. They blasted dynamites on the other shore – Bankura – to let the monsoon fury swallow entire villages in that poverty-stricken district. No one ever came to know the number of people that died, lost their homes – ended up as bloated corpses. The Steel Plant had to be saved. There was too much invested in it…