A Flood
I shall never forget those terrible days when it rained and rained and it seemed that there was not going to the any end to the heavy downpour. Again and again I thought of ancient times and myths and Biblical stories about floods. It seemed we were all to be wiped out of existence. Everyone said it had not been like this for many many years, some said thirty one, others said thirty seven. The rain continued unabated. The rivers were heavily swollen by now. All of them Barito. Mendawai and Kutai overflowed their banks. Thousands of people were rendered homeless and still there was no likelihood of the deluge coming to an end.
The first reaction to the rain was a wild one. Everyone hoped it would soon end. After all this was a heavy rainfall area and it did rain, so, what was there to worry about? But there were no intermittent flecks of sun and the heavy downpour resembled nothing that we had ever seen. Was this a punishment for some lapses, some sins, and some failures? Prayers were of no avail: the rain continued. By the fifth day it was terrible. Life was very difficult. Everything was badly dislocated. No movement was possible except in boats. The whole town had become like so many houseboats. The ground floor of every house had become uninhabitable. People clustered together in safer places. in higher buildings. Earlier there were attempts to salvage something but soon the attempts were abandoned and people scrambled for dear life. The normalcy of life became a long forgotten thing. No milk, no regular meals, no vegetables and no communication with the outside world. No telephone links. no arrival of newspapers! Nothing at all. One only had one’s own tiny self and that was all.
There was reason for concern for by now dead animals floated in the streets and there was no uncontaminated drinking water. A few houses also collapsed resulting in loss of life. Food was air dropped on one or two occasions but the continued bad whether hindered this aid also. Poorer people who had to depend on their daily earnings were starving. They had no food and no shelter and no other means of sustenance. The flood was like a scourge of the gods.
The heavily laden skies seemed to have shed a great deal of their burden and by the seventh day the sky appeared a little lighter. Gradually it began clearing up, people heaved sighs of relief. The rain stopped and the level of the water started receding. It became possible for rescue teams to arrive and to be organized. It also became possible for food parcels to be air dropped. People were collected from very odd places. Hovering between life and death, sitting in limited space, sometimes on treetops, and not getting any nourishment, their limbs were cramped and their bodies emaciated.
There was every possibility that there would be an epidemic of cholera. The authorities asked for volunteer medical teams. The Red Cross Society also organized rescue teams and some arrived from neighboring areas. Inoculations were given. Other help was also rendered. But the epidemic did break out and many people died. It was soon checked and that itself was an achievement.
As most calamities come and recede, so did this. The town slowly crawled back to normalcy. Many lives had been lost and also a great amount of property. It took time to repair the damages done to the machines and to get vehicles on the road and to repair telecommunications but human effort is capable of doing anything and it proved resilient enough to recover from the disaster.
