Cyclone Aila

chillibreeze writer — Anu Sharma

Everyone loves the rains
The beauty of the monsoons is best enjoyed from the verandahs of antique forest bungalows in the dense Dooars forests. The verdant forest cover unfurls itself at its greenest best and the sound of raindrops falling on the leaves creates a rhythm unmatched in melody by any manmade music.

Even though the rainy season is marked as an “off” season in the calendars of tour operators, many people flock to this part of north Bengal, braving floods and bad roads, to soak in the sights and sounds of the forests sloshed on monsoon rains.

Rains have always been known to trigger poetic imagination, ignite passion, heal wounds, and soothe parched nerves. It has rendered poets of lovers and lovers of poets. Childhood lessons, teaching us to keep safe distance from the rains lie in some cobwebbed recesses of memory - its impression fading with every shower as we become more and more sensitized to the exquisite experiences that nature offers.

The fury of the rains
But, like most beautiful things, the rains can get mighty destructive, and wreak havoc in the lives of people, breaking down the very foundation of existence in real world, what they help create in the world of imagination.

This year, the monsoons in east India made a big-bang entry, much before it was scheduled, accompanied by a cyclone, leaving hundreds dead and countless homeless. And the innocent-sounding word Aila— heard before in numerous Bollywood numbers, suddenly began to stand for death, destruction, despair and desperation.

Aila’s path of destruction
According to an IANS report, as many as 5.3 million people have been affected by Cyclone Aila, which ravaged several areas of the state on May 25 across 13 districts. It claimed at least 117 lives. Nearly 600,000 houses were fully or partly damaged. As it whizzed through the spine of the state—coming almost 15 km close to Calcutta before deciding to spare the metropolis a repeat of The Great Calcutta Cyclone of 1864 that had killed 60,000 — it moved north leaving behind a trail of death and destruction; trees and lives uprooted, windscreens and dreams smashed.

Closer home, Darjeeling Hills were at the receiving end of Aila’s fury in her last leg of Bengal Marathon. In all, 27 people were reported dead and two have gone missing after the cyclone and rain—240 mm of rainfall within 24 hours— triggered a series of landslides. As tragedy would have it six of the dead were those who had come to save the family of Pooja Gurung at Harisashatta from as far as Soom Tea Garden. The saviors saved 14 lives, but lost their own. More than 600 homes have been washed away. The hills are in need of a massive rehabilitation and rebuilding initiative.

Who’s to blame?
Amid all this death and destruction, one wonders whose fault it is. Every year in the monsoons, the hills remain cut off more than once. Mountain walls come sliding down, roads get washed away and houses tumble down like packs of cards; needless to mention the trauma to flora and fauna.

Aila sure is the villain of the present tragedy. But the truth is that the Hills are now beginning to give in to the ruthless torture unleashed on them by the ever-increasing insensitive population. Deforestation, indiscriminate constructions, with little or no plan at all, no well-laid drainage system, mindless garbage-dumping— how long will the hills take all this without a whimper?

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in April, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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