By Mia Miriam Sojan
I was in the kitchen rinsing the cup I’d drank milk from, inhaling the enticing scent of petrichor and listening to earth’s endless song, when the news flooded my ears. I still remember the distant voice of the news anchor announce that someone had passed away while attempting to save their neighbor’s child from drowning during the flooding caused by the rain. The poor man didn’t know how to swim they said, and I could do nothing besides helplessly desensitize as I watched the milk bleed into the colorless residue of water in the sink.
It was the August of 2018. Monsoon wept like it does every year and the south-west monsoon winds breathed good news to every part of Kerala. Everybody besides children were excited for the arrival of monsoon. Maybe we were too, with just a little hope of holidays if it floods.
We were no strangers to floods. It flooded nearly every year and if lucky we managed to get around one or two holidays before our schools ultimately decided they value our education over the city’s clogging drains and kill us in boredom by shifting classes online. Nobody foresaw a tragedy that year. Nobody thought that the gentle breezes would become the knocking winds that’ll haunt us at every door and that the pattering rain would become nothing more than the ghost of melancholy in the years to come.
The severity of the situation was only pondered upon when the intensity of the rain persisted in the following days to come, but by then it became too late. Our hearts pounding, we had to resort to what our parents taught us to believe in, prayer. And that’s what all of Kerala collectively did. We prayed hoping the successive days wouldn’t get worse than the ones prior. However, all our prayers went in vain with the opening of the floodgates of the Idukki dam.
The rain wailed, its sorrow never running dry. It now began uprooting trees and swallowing everything in its path. Our houses became the ocean and the water became our homes.
Kerala as a community, had never faced quite a challenge like this before. We didn’t know how it would be possible for us as a community to help each other out when everyone was affected. But that’s when the fishermen stepped in.
As masters of the sea, they knew the water like the back of their hand. They did everything from running everybody’s errands to transporting critical patients to local hospitals to helming rescue operations in flood affected areas, day after day seeing nothing but an avalanche of wood, mud and rotting bodies, never once complaining or taking a break despite being exhausted and fatigued.
The fishermen not only helped tremendously, but also urged Kerala to realize that if united, we could overcome this catastrophe. Soon, schools, hospitals, auditoriums and government institutions were set up as relief camps for those who were forced to abandon their homes and families as a result of the floods.
The youth stepped in and helped raise online funds to buy food supplies and basic amenities. They encouraged everybody to donate clothes and other belongings to those stuck in relief camps. The Army, the Navy and the Air force contributed significantly to mobilize rescue operations throughout Kerala. Malayalis around the globe gathered help by regulating control centers via social media to coordinate rescue operations.
Together we rescued each other from nature’s wrath and by the time the echoes of our lament embraced the cries of those left behind, the rain finally stopped. The devastating aftermath of the rain, revealed over 483 lives lost, some, the result of selfless acts of courage whilst the others, their souls forever tainted by helpless misery. The irony in breath becoming air in some, whilst the same air became breath for some others in the midst of all this was not lost on me. Finally, with the help of the Rebuild Kerala Initiative of the State Government, Kerala was back to what it was months prior.
I feel a plethora of emotions as I sit here, writing about the values of love and respect my community passes onto its future generations. It is only because of the selflessness of the fishermen, the Army, the police and the entirety of our community, that I can say that a lot of us are still here, breathing and alive.
It isn't blood alone that determines a family. It is the bonds that transcend time and traverse places, deeply rooted in love and affection that make us feel belonged. My community thrives on its togetherness, respect, love and affection for its members. Our unity and mutual support for the betterment of our fellow brethren is what makes our strive for overcoming adversity a fruitful one.
We fell, but falling is how we learn to walk. Our stumbles left us battered and bruised, but bruises eventually heal. It was in the depths of desolation, that threads of despair interwove itself into our community, but today, it's those threads that bind us together. Through thick and thin, together we fell, and together we rose. And as we walk hand in hand, the flavor of our food and color of our clothes celebrating our culture, I realize that my community is my home and its people my family. It'll forever be in them that my lost self belongs.
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By Mia Miriam Sojan
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