Phailin ke pehley Phailin ke baad Gopalpur

“It began as a gentle breeze on the morning of October 12. By afternoon anything that could fly was flying. Then it became very dark and the rain came in sheets and the sound of wind changed to a shrill sharp whistle. Then silence. Utter quiet. At 8.30 p.m. there was a distant roar with whooo sound, like a pack of wolves, it was coming from all sides and it grew fearsomely louder. I remembered 1999 and ran inside and bolted the door and the pet dog wouldn’t leave my side,” says Venkatesh, a fisherman, who saw Cyclone Phailin strike Gopalpur on Sea just 600 metres from the coastline.

“It was like a mirror. A sheet of water and me and my friends could not take a step in the rain without the fear of being blown away,” says Ritesh, an engineering student, who clambered to the terrace of hostel building of National Institute of Science and Technology.

Repairing, make it reassembling, their thatched house, the fisherfolk in Kotta Bauxpalli how they were forced to leave with whatever they could carry on their person on the day of the cyclone and shifted to a school on the hill. “When we came back, there was nothing left, we could salvage some bamboo sticks and brought some new coconut leaves to put the roof back on,” says Korlamma, a housewife, as the family works on the thatched house.  

They said Cyclone Phailin packed the power of 100 H-bombs. Oddly enough, Gopalpur and its neighbouring villages now resemble a warzone with nothing vertical except concrete constructions. Some cellphone towers have appear as if they are draped around the building they were standing. Centuries old banyan and peepul trees have been plucked out of ground like rice plants. Transmission towers and coconut trees have been snapped into two like matchsticks.  

It will take some years for the villagers to get back on to their feet.

My Amma

This is my mother. Today is her birthday. If she was alive, she would have been 79. I am
here because of her. Every time I see this haunting photograph clicked at a cousin's wedding
in Visakhapatnam, I think about how I would have clicked her photograph now. Sitting on the big green chair at our Nagpur home, or the sofa for which she designed white covers with her embroidery of elephants, deer and peacocks? Or in the kitchen where she used to cook the awesome yet simple dishes?
With the cake she used to bake for my birthday and hide it in the attic out of my reach? Or in the sprawling house of her father which is now a hotel? The mind races with ideas and photo op images.
We lived in Nagpur, Motibaug Colony, Q No 173/4. I don't remember much about her appearance except for the fact that when I see myself in the mirror, I see my mother's complexion. I remember the white conch bangle, the red bangles she would wear along with the gold bangles and big red dot of sindoor. Born into prosperity and pelf in Gopalpur on Sea in Orissa, marriage brought her to first Nainpur and then Nagpur where my father was posted. Summer vacations would mean the 1000 km trip of two days switching three trains and endless hours in waiting rooms where I would get to sleep on the bedding roll (do you guys remember) which had the smell of vintage leather thanks to the straps.
A woman can be herself or be a mother. My mother was both. By being a mother to three children didn't affect her personality. Or did it? Everytime I see a black and white movie with her favourite song in Telugu and Hindi I wish she was alive today. In the age before TV, the Philips valve radio was our window to the world. We listened to news, songs, stories and then some. Afternoons meant listening to radio Cuddapah Kendram which was the source of Telugu songs and culture at home.
Amma surrounded us with culture. We had an aquarium before it was a rage, my brother had a Hawaiian guitar at a time when mothers would hit their children for not studying, my brother did oil paintings when paints were priced at a premium. Then in the late seventies my brother bought a HMV 1010 ic record player and my world opened to the sounds of ABBA, Bee Gees, Tavares, Osibisa, Beethoven, Manna De, Jagjit and Chitra Singh. Today, as I see helicopter moms trying to control their children's creativity, I wonder about my mother and thank her every living moment for letting me be me: Even when I hid class books to avoid reading. When I was in class VII, my brother bought Stevenson's Treaure Island home which he wanted to gift it to a friend the next day. I had my science exam the next day and I desperately wanted to read the book. My brother wanted none of it. My mother struck a deal for me. If I could answer the questions my brother asked, I would be free to read Treasure Island. My mother knew me well and I won. And I was allowed to read the book till 11 p.m. I was swept away by the sea spray of Stevenson and his characters and it was the beginning of my adventure with words and stories.
Children learn the ways of the world from their fathers and about relationships from their mothers. For me my mother showed both the paths. Her world and ideas were very clear. Her feminine intuition cut through the claptrap of politics. For her Gandhi was the villain of partition for singing religious songs in public sphere and Jinnah a real hero who failed.
"Religion belongs inside the home you don't have to show it to the world," she said. "When Nehru died in 1964 his ashes were sprinkled all over the country and it led to 10 years of drought," she told me and also told me about the heroic Lal Bahadur Shastri who swam across a river to educate himself and as a prime minister came up with the idea of skipping dinner on Tuesday evening to save foodgrains when Pakistan attacked India. Patriotism didn't mean salaming Gandhi or Nehru or calling them ji but in standing up when the National Anthem was being played, whereever we were.
One of her sisters had a troubled marriage at a time when such things didn't exist in respectable families. As a child, I learnt that was unacceptable. How can a man control or ill-treat a woman? Not done. The men folk who peered into other people's houses were deemed bad and those who didn't poke their noses were considered good. I wasn't told what was good or bad, but was given the positive choice.
I was a mamma's boy as I followed her everywhere. I would listen to her conversations with others and keep filing away the information. My brother would have none of it and pull me out of the feminine company. But I had learnt a lot. I became a metrosexual man before the word was coined.
Was it all good? No.
I grew up to be a man unfit for this age of greed, envy and competitive jealousy. A non assertive person who doesn't know when to say no.
But I am happy. I just miss my mother, her sambar, her kaja, her avakai, her mean mutton curry, her dry fish baingan curry, her ugadi pachchadi (I know one other mother who makes it similarly).
This blog post is for my mother who believed in me, my brother and my sister. This is for us. Happy Birthday Amma.

Death of a duck

Years ago, before Discovery Channel and Animal Planet happened. I killed a Ruddy Shelduck in Gopalpur-on-Sea. One of my  uncles had my grandfather's single barrel gun. You load a red coloured cartridge with a certain number on it. The higher the number, the more number of pellets (round bullets) the gun fired. You walk to the edge of a lake or a water body that had a large number of water birds and you fire at the place with highest density of birds and the birds tumble into water that have to be retrieved. If the shooting of the bird appears like a no-brainer, retrieving it is an act of courage. You wade into the slushy lake of unknown depth and long lotus stems that can pull you down and trap you and entangle you. And just when you have reached a nearly dead duck, all it does is waddle one foot and it moves further away from you!
Since, I was young, I was not allowed to shoot the birds. Carry the cartridges, crawl on all fours and retrieve the birds that was the job of a young man.
One afternoon (duck hunting is done in early afternoon when the sun is up and the birds have gorged themselves to the gills and somnolently clean and preen themselves) we reached the edge of the backwaters and the uncle's friend fired at a pair that was waddling near the edge. One pellet struck one bird while the other took to air. Apparently, these ducks mate for life and the bird that was alive would circle the dead one to find its well being. So, like good humans we waited out of sight near the dead duck while its mate circled overhead making raucous calls. It dived down and rose up and did ever tighter circles near its mate. Finally, after about half hour it decided to land near its mate. A duck is very graceful in water but out of it, it is the clumsiest thing on two feet. When it lands, it slows down, rears back, puts its feet first and then waddles to glide into the water. The uncle took aim and fired in the general region where the dead duck was. The bird raised its head in fear and tried to fly off but managed to flap only one wing. The pellet had struck the other wing. I raced into the water and retrieved both the ducks one dead and the other very alive and vigorous bird. It was a beautiful bird. Mainly bright yellow colour with different coloured feathers on its back and neck, bluish beak, and red eyes.
We cycled home with me holding the bird and whole village gawking at the spectacle.
One of my brother's vegetarian Punjabi friend from Nagpur came home on the same day and he was zapped with all the hullabaloo. I took the bird to a neighbouring fisherman who deftly cut the neck of the bird and gave me its body after some time.
That day, dinner was an awesome experience for  me. I would be lying if I say I felt guilt for the bird. The meat was tender, the bones could be chewed  and eaten up.
But now, as a mature person, when I think, I wonder how I could do what I did. Why didn't I bandage the bird's wing and let if fly. Why I didn't stop my uncle from shooting birds that mate for life.
Even now, our education is about marks and human life and not about humanism and nature.