Flood and survival

It was 1961. The monsoon came as a chatter and the water gurgled down the streams. As days and months passed torrential rain battered our roofs. The sluice gates of the heavens were opened up and it was a continuous downpour. The rising of the water level thrilled us, children. We went to the riverside, stood their gazing at the one kilometer wide, muddy, foamy, mad flow down. There were logs big and small floating and whole trees uprooted in the brown, downward, drunken march. Villagers could be seen as specks rowing in their country crafts against the current collecting logs of wood and loading them on to their boats. When the crafts were full, big trunks were tethered to the boats by ropes and brought ashore deftly. So many people would gather at the steps leading to the water and  engage in animated discussions on the value of the timber collected and the possibility for a big flood that year.  We measured the rising level of the river by keeping marks on the steps. After two days, People started predicting a big flood as the skies grew dark and a storm burst out every other hour.  After a torrential downpour, pregnant clouds would gather up from nowhere and cover the entire eastern horizon. We knew the grim darkness would burst up in another thunder shower and we would run to the safety of our ramshackle homes. 

In a few days flood waters had reached the paddy field behind our house. We were quite happy and excited. We made rafts with trunks of plantain trees and rowed on the tranquil flood lakes. It was pretty enjoyable; the waters were still and shallow and the green patches of paddy shoots could still be seen. But heavy rain would come unannounced and drain us all. Hence, as the skies grew cloudy, dark we knew the coming of a storm and we oared towards our plot. We dashed home in the drizzle and later huge drops would lash our house with strong winds as we huddled up inside. 

When the skies cleared up, we went to play in the flooded fields again. We did not care the  discussions regarding the chances of a flood. The next day morning I could see that the entire fields were under the flood waters. It was inching towards our compound. Our well was at the brink of overflowing and I could see flood water in the low areas, in the southern side.  

Fear gripped everyone. Fearful shouts and screams could be heard from many parts of the village. People stopped by our fence and I could hear elders discussing moving out to higher areas. Towards the afternoon many of the villagers were seen moving en masse carrying a few pots, plates and provisions in a sack.  

The southern side looked like a huge tranquil lake but its level was rising up alarmingly. Our father was not home and mother did not know what to do with her 7 children. A few of the villagers on the move, asked her  just to follow them then and there.  

"You cannot remain here with your children surrounded with floods in the night. Come with us," villagers said.

We took a few things in a sack, and joined the exodus. Our destination was an elevated side of the village. We had to hurry up as reports reached us that the bunds connecting to the spot was under threat from the floods. We all moved faster in a trot and we safely crossed over. The same night it burst out and a new stream started flowing there as a branch of the swollen river.

The whole sojourn was sheer fun. There was no work; we could play all the time. The only sad thing was that we were not allowed to go near the flooded areas and there was very little to eat other than steamed tapioca and occasional gruel. Mother cooked with a country stove, with the twigs collected by us, in a corner and we all slept huddled up on the floor close by, on bamboo mats.

Water was rising up; there were rumors about the breakage of other bunds, and the possibility of a dam bursting out. Water had already entered our house I heard, and it was flowing west like a huge river. So many houses were collapsing and a few had died or were missing. Fear gripped us all; if water level rose another 10 feet it would enter our new quarters and everything would be over.

We were running out of provisions too. Tapioca, coconut, plantain and banana were collected, brought and shared. Everything became common property. Ownership did not matter. Before the prospects of imminent of death, survival alone counted.   

We were almost marooned as there was water on all the four sides of that elevated place. By the second day the water started receding. And on the third morning we returned home. It was a mess. Flood waters had deposited dark soil and dirt all around and the whole place looked like a battle ground.             

A big fall

It was half past 5 in the afternoon. The day's bamboo weaving was over and I was free. Feeling rather hungry, I walked towards the mango trees at the southern boundary of of our plot. The eastern-most one bore raw  mangoes with a few ripe ones here and there. My mother watched me climb towards the top, standing in the courtyard.. When I was up there I could see a really good one dangling from a small branch.  I remember telling mother 'I will get this one' as I inched towards it. I caught hold of it and everything became blank thereafter. When I awoke I was bed-ridden in the government hospital at Perumbavoor. I had fallen and my left leg's joint got dislocated. Later, I heard that there was blood in my mouth as I lay unconscious at the foot of the tree. The neighbours did not try to help me as they thought I was dead. I had fallen from a height of 30'! I hit against a branch mid way that luckily reduced the momentum of  fall. A rich man lent his car to bring me to the hospital. The doctors simply ignored me and I lay orphaned without even a plaster over the fractured area as my people could not bribe them. I stayed there in excruciating pain unable to walk or stand. On the third day, I was taken on a bicycle to a village physician 5 kilometres away who would massage the area with his medicinal oil. He continued this treatment for 2 weeks, and still it was painful. After 15 days  we went  home, again on a bicycle, to continue massaging with home made oil. After 3 months I could stand and slowly walk. But a limp developed, as one leg was shorter than the other by one or two centimetres. Even today I have a slight limp. There are many 'free' government hospitals in India but efficient care and treatment always come with a price. The poor are disadvantaged everywhere. Inequality is the law of nature: some are born with silver spoons in their mouth and others with a begging bowl.    

Death of a tubercular patient

We were poor, they were poorer. We  had a tiled house, theirs was a mud one. An old man lived there with his older-looking wife and a tall lanky sickly young man, Sauru. He always coughed and I remember my mother mentioning  there were blood stains in his mucus. He used to come, sit at a corner of our veranda and make 'beedis' (cheap cigarette) as we weaved mats. He was very fast in his work. I used to watch his rhythmic motion of cutting the leaves, rolling them and closing the front with tobacco. He would be talking non-stop about the exploitation of the poor by the rich and extolling the rule of the proletariat. He was a communist and he used to attend the party study circles. Disregarding his illness, he wanted to marry and at last his people found a dark, short, uneducated woman. His parents died soon after his marriage. A boy and a girl were born to them and they were crying most of the time out of hunger or illness.  In the third year of their marriage his wife too started coughing non-stop. She was losing her vigor and youth. Sauru became very sick and was confined to his hut unable to even rise up. They had no food and survived on whatever his poor neighbors gave them. One day I saw him coughing thick blood. He died the next day.  Slowly, Tuberculosis tightened its grip on his frail wife too. Without food and medication she became a skeleton and died the following year. The children died soon and darkness (or light?) engulfed the hut once and for all.     

Child labor --my parents could be booked! :)

I had already learnt to weave bamboo mats when I was 4 years old and I helped my elder brothers whenever it pleased me. It was fun. But when I turned 5 I had to weave one 7' x 5' mat on school-off days. It was no more fun but hard work. I was so small that after weaving a mat sliver from one end to the other of the mat, I had to make a frog-jump to come to the original position to start weaving again. About 100 such slivers had to be woven in a mat and I had to make as many leaps before I finished one. The morning  rice  gruel and the noon steamed  tapioca was consumed for the energy and I would soon become empty-stomached again. Still I was happy if I could complete the mat by the time the sound of the Chennai (then Madras)-Kochi aircraft boomed above our small house (at about  half past two). It was child Labor but my people needed the wages so badly. (Today it would be an offence). I dashed off then jocundly to the dusty courtyards in my loin clothes to play with the  emaciated neighbourhood children.