ELECTION 99
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
ELECTIONS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

The Rediff Special/ M I Khan in Paradip

'It was the curse of God'

The cyclone warning was nothing new for Janardhan Patnaik, a government employee living in the centre of this port town. But last Friday afternoon was different. He and his family were forced to shelter atop their two-storey building as the sea flooded into the town and kept on flooding.

Patnaik was not the only person so threatened. Actually he was quite privileged. Thousands living in the jhopris in Nauliya Basti, Telanga Basti, Barapadya and near the Jagannath Mandir, not to mention those right on the shores, had no second floor to seek refuge in.

Those who were lucky and quick on their feet escaped. Others perished.

Even after five days, over half of the town is still under water. Streets and thoroughfares are deserted, and you will hardly find any shop open.

''We never imagined that we would have to face the sea in the town. People ran from here to there but many of them died," says Tapan Padht, who works in the Indian Oil Corporation depot.

Hundreds of bodies had been floating around in the town till yesterday. This correspondent spotted quite a few. A district official, contrary to news reports that placed the death toll at 10,000 in Paradip, said that the calamity claimed only 1,000-odd people. The locals, he continued, had not taken the cyclone warnings seriously.

He admitted that the administration did not feel it necessary to evacuate people as there was no question of the sea entering the town. But it happened.

"The inundation of sea water was so powerful that it took just minutes to reach our house," said rickshaw-puller Puntia Rao, who, though he managed to save himself, lost his wife and child.

Most of the people from other places have started leaving the town. Pratap Mohanty of Cuttack, with fear still in his eyes, describes the cyclone "the curse of God." "God has given us the warning to make the world pure -- or else nature will play with us," he said.

Hordes of people were seen walking away from the town along the national highway, thanks to the rumour that another cyclone was on its way to Paradip.

The fifth day after the cyclone, relief materials have started reaching the town and other affected areas by land.

The floods have damaged the Paradip Phosphate complex, the buildings of the Oswal Group. You could see many decomposed bodies on the coast.

"All these bodies belong to daily wage-earners and the poorest of the poor," said Sabrata Rao, a fisherman from Andhra Pradesh who settled in Paradip four decades ago.

The air is filled with the smell of rotting bodies and animal carcasses. All along the coast, you can see thousands of roofless houses. At several places on the beach, Port Trust workers were seen piling bodies together for mass funerals.

On your way back, you see hordes of homeless in the hundreds of makeshift shelters that have sprouted freshly along the national highway. Their eyes are now dry. But the suffering you see etched on their faces is eloquent testimony to the horrors they have lived through - with bloated corpses floating around, without water, without food.

The Rediff Specials

Tell us what you think of this feature