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When death came calling -- at 195 kmph!

Striding the deck of a trawler, on the storm-tossed sea, is nothing new for veteran fisherman Jussub Jaku Kuriea.

Yet, there is a mix of unwonted apprehension, coupled with eagerness, on his face as his eyes pierce the gloom of the dusk, scanning the choppy waters for a 'catch' of a different kind -- namely, his ten year old nephew, Ahmed Jaku Kuriea.

Neither he, nor Ahmed's father Dawood Jaku Kuriea, have any idea whether the stripling is dead or alive. All they can do, all they have done since the cyclone impacted on Kandla Port with devastating force on June 9, is to seek, high and low, for trace of life.

Twenty days and nights of searching later, the embers of hope struggle against the tidal wave of despair. "I have travelled to Jamnagar, Porbandar and Navlakhi. I have seen seas studded with dead bodies, these past 20 days. But I have not yet found my nephew," says Jussub. "All I can do is pray to Allah that he should be alive, somehow, somewhere."

Jussub is not alone in his grisly search. 1,805 citizens of the port city are still missing and, everywhere, the search goes on -- the searchers teetering on the emotional tightrope between hope and despair.

If Jussub seeks -- with Allah's help -- for Ahmed, then Sonn Lal, with Bhagwan Ram's name on his lips, seeks for word of his five year old daughter, Sangeeta. Searching not on the high seas, but among the debris of homes destroyed by the storm.

The native of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh had come to Kandla ten years ago, taken on as a casual labourer in the port. It's been, for him, a way to eke out a fairly decent living, earning between Rs 100-150 per day -- and then the storm struck, with sickening impact.

"My Sangeeta is nowhere to be seen," he recalls. "I was holding her tight when the cyclone came, but the winds were too strong, I couldn't hold on... we got separated..."

The rest is drowned in sobs... helpless, bitter, despairing...

Local weather experts indicate that the cyclonic winds touched incredible, irresistible speeds of around 195 kmph that day.

Entire houses, especially in the jhopadpatti region, were blown away or caved in on themselves, trapping occupants. Those who managed to get out found no succour -- the winds merely swept them up and carried them out to sea, where tidal waves crashed down on them.

As always with nature's calamities, it was the poorest segments that were the worst hit -- in this case, the most affected areas being the seven bastis: Sirva labour camp, railway slum, Banna, Mitha port, Jira port, Chemical & Resin Private Limited slum (CRPL), and Old Kandla slum -- that houses the casual labourers who make a living of sorts out of the port.

Officials say that 882 bodies have been recovered, that 1,805 persons are still missing. Locals put the figure much higher -- at around 15,000, dead or missing.

"I am sure more than 15,000 people have died," argues Chandra Prakash, a labourer from Rajasthan whose sister is one among the victims. "I stay in Sirva labour camp, there alone there are over 5,000 people staying, many of them casual labourers from other states. After the storm, I have been searching, but so far I haven't seen more than about 100 familiar faces. The rest, I am sure, are dead."

As you walk about the stricken seaport, you realise that Kandla was a tragedy waiting to happen.

The cash-rich port has always attracted migrant labour from all over the country -- the wages, higher than unskilled labour could attract elsewhere, being the main draw.

Infrastructure, however, lagged way behind this influx, and the labourers ended up eking out their existence in shanty-towns fringing the port -- in huts pitifully inadequate, in retrospect, to withstand the rage of the elements.

And since casual labour is a disorganised sector, no one has any real clue about the exact numbers involved.

"It is difficult to pin down figures, say exactly how many are dead in the storm," admits A N M Kishore, chairperson, Kandla Port Trust. "Labourers come and go, from all parts of the country, we never have a real idea just how many there are at any point in time. In fact, I have received inquiries from places as far away as Kerala, stating that their people too are missing."

Typically, even as survivors seek the bodies of those less fortunate, officialdom struggles to get normal life back on the rails. And it is liable, they say, to take quite some doing -- optimistic estimates indicate that it will be six months, at the very least, to achieve a semblance of normalcy.

It is not just the huts, the living quarters, that have been effected -- the sheer velocity of the winds has resulted in the shifting of huge steel tanks, immense cargo containers, to distances of two kilometres and more from their original resting places.

Trees? Nary a one standing. Electric poles? History. In fact, the Gujarat Electricity Board achieved what on the surface seems an impossible task, restoring 70 per cent electric connections in the time since the storm struck.

The numbers are bewildering. "Nearly 20 lakh trees have been destroyed completely after the storm," says Mukesh Puri, Collector, Bhuj district. "Some 50,000 electric poles have fallen before the storm, 18,000 of them smashed completely. However, we have been able to restore 70 per cent of the electricity in 20 days."

The biggest problem for officialdom, however, is the spectre of epidemics -- almost inevitable in the aftermath of such storms. To combat the possible outbreak, government agencies including the Navy, Coast Guard and Border Security Force have been put on maximum alert.

"We are distributing chlorine tablets to everyone, large scale chlorination of water is also being carried out, the activities have been stepped up further after one case of cholera was reported on June 16," says Puri.

Large-scale tragedy -- which sometimes brings out the best in both people and officialdom -- however has a way of attracting the worst, as well.

Officials here in Kandla are even now re-learning that essential lesson about human behaviour.

Thus, no sooner did the state government announce a temporary relief measure -- cheques of Rs 5,000 apiece, for immediate expenses, to inhabitants of the port city -- than it spawned an even worse epidemic. Of the greedy streaming in from other parts of the country, trying to get theirs while the getting is good.

In the absence of proper documentation, all it takes is for a person to go to the State Bank of India office, claim to be a resident, and produce two witnesses in support -- and he is immediately richer by Rs 5,000.

Predictably, thus, carpetbaggers have been coming in by the bus- and train-load, claiming what is not theirs to claim. And officialdom has no option but to pay up.

"People come here from outside and claim the money but we, the people really effected, have no time to stand in queues, we are busy searching for the bodies of our relatives, busy trying to reconstruct our homes," says a frustrated Mohammad Isaac, casual labourer.

"Though there has been not much damage in Gandhidham, 15 km from Kandla, the people of that locality are also queueing up for the money," adds Puri, the collector.

Meanwhile, foreign nationals face their own problems, arising out of the storm. And the biggest one -- which apparently provokes them to anger and disgust when they discuss it -- is the complete absence of advance warning.

* "In my eighteen years of sailing, I never had such a bad experience," says Brind Lee, Sri Lankan sailor with the firm Athanais Maritime. "We were caught totally unawares, the KPT officials did not even bother to inform us about the impending storm."

And Lee is not the sole complainant, either. "The KPT should have ordered all the ships to leave port and go into the deep sea when they knew the cyclone was going to hit the coast," argues Naeem Shah, electrical engineer from Karachi, Pakistan. "Had they done this, the ships would not have suffered such crippling damage."

"In 1981," recalls Lee, "when I was in Hanoi, we had a similar storm but the Vietnamese government gave us plenty of advance warning, we took our ships into the deep sea and rode out the storm, quite safely."

Nature's unpredictable fury. Official incompetence. Ingredients in an epic tragedy that has crippled perhaps the busiest of India's 11 major ports.

It is dusk, and as I walk around, I realise I am one of the very few people present inside a port that, on normal days, should have been humming with surcharged activity at this time.

"People stood in queues to enter the port," says a KPT official. "20 days after the storm struck, we are still to recover. And I suspect," he adds, sighing in frustration, "that it will take a long, long time before we manage to recapture our past glory."

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