'Nature Red in Tooth and Claw' - Hurricane Amphan

‘If you by your art, my dearest father, you have put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. The sky, it seems would pour down stinking pitch, but that fire mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek dashes the fire out.

William Shakespeare

The Tempest

For the last three days the fear of Covid 19 took a back seat in West Bengal and Odisha as the Bay of Bengal raged in a turmoil. Climatic maps would show a huge white circle swirling over the Bay, threatening to engulf the vibrant megapolis. The Meteorological office called it the ‘super cyclone’, the likes of which had not been seen in the last century.

Amphan did not disappoint.

From midnight, 19th May, powerful winds started blowing. Little did I know that ‘powerful’ would change the very next day. The night passed peacefully. The temperature was nothing like the usual Kolkata summer, perhaps 16-17 degree Celsius. Even this did not foreshadow what was to happen in a few hours.

By then Odisha had started bearing the fury of the storm. Evacuations had commenced and thanks to Covid, Puri that was usually bustling with tourists was now desolate. Amphan, travelled the sea at a speed of 180 kmph; made land fall at around 2:30 in the afternoon. By the grace of God that was the low tide then and the speed of the monster could be controlled a little more.

The iconic mini buses and yellow taxis of Kolkata destroyed before the fury of Amphan

I was in Rishra, a small suburb in the district of Hooghly, by the Ganges. The dance of destruction had already begun there. Here, the skies were overcast and that it was raining cats and dogs was an understatement. A wind was blowing with moderate speed signaling the coming of the tornado. A few more hours passed and then the catastrophe begun. The howling winds smoky dark rain descended from the sky as if in a warpath. It looked less of water and more petroleum coming in a downpour. The trees that surrounded our house began to shake violently, the huge trunks of the mango tree and the jackfruit tree liable to fall any minute. The pond adjacent to our house became like a turbulent sea, the shallow waters overflowing. I was overwhelmed by the destructive nuances of nature when, suddenly I heard a sharp cracking sound. A long thin betel nut tree, that had withstood the Aila of 2009 came crashing down on our garden, sparing the cable wire by a hair’s breadth. The rain continued for hours into the night. None of us could sleep and again I heard a hitting sound. The heavy asbestos roof of a neighbour’s garage had flown off and landed in our garden with a thud! We watched as the street lights turned off, plunging us into a perilous darkness.

The Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Airport inundated and waterlogged; the planes were all shifted

My father and I had to go to secure the windows and doors that had already waged a war against the concrete, threatening to smash it in. Just as I tried to switch on the lights, I realized that there had been a short circuit and I received a sudden electric jolt. After sometime we fell asleep, not truly realising the damage the state had undertaken, sheltered in our warm homes of cement and steel.

The Howrah Bridge above the Ganges receives a powerful lashing from Amphan.

The next morning the Sun was reluctant to sign in all brightness and we could fathom some of the mayhem that had been caused. A few people had been electrocuted by loose wires in the neighbouring town as they may have had to step outdoors. Kolkata, that had faced the brunt of the storm was heavily damaged. Trees, traffic lights, electricity poles and telephone towers had been uprooted. A few cars had toppled, the glass windows of many houses and cars shattered. In the Delhi Road, a National Highway, about fifty huge trucks had overturned because of the storm. Fields of farmers have been flooded. While we, the blessed had a cement roof above our house, many didn’t. I shudder to imagine what could have happened to those in weak mud house with thatched roofs. What has happened to the old, poor, the needy and the disabled who were not able to fend for themselves? While Covid 19 made them income-less, Amphan took everything else they had.

In the end do we really matter? Money, power, wealth, fame, our petty squabbles, that come from dust and to dust it shall return. The power of nature, both to create and destroy is incomprehensible. Our time on earth is limited and we are duty bound to leave it the way we found it for it is not ours to destroy. If humankind does not understand that, it shall fall upon nature to teach a lesson to its best yet most rogue creation.

“Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya, Glanir Bhavati Bharata

Abhiyuttanam Adharmasyam, Tadanmanam Srijamiaham

Paritrananaya Sadhunam, Vinshaya Chadushkritam

Dharmasangstapharhtay Sambhavmi Yuge Yuge”

Author: Anubhav