Friday, December 31, 2004

Tales from the dark side of Killari quake

NO parties tomorrow. At least not for me, I’m trying to tell my friends. I’m training myself to usher in 2005 with a new hope as the grief of sev­eral unknown faces stares at me from the images of a terrible tragedy unfolding across the eastern coast. I don’t know what difference it would make if a few individuals didn’t party. Still, I don't want to go gaga to ring in the New Year.

The Sunday tsunami that has ravaged South Asia, including India, takes me back to 9/30, 93. Killari. 6.4 on Richter scale. Official records say that 86 villages in eastern Marathwada were wiped off the face of the earth. Killari then, the seismologists told us, was India’s worst earthquake since her Independence. The Government put the toll around 10,000. I visited Killari and a few other villages like Sastur and Talni thrice after that. Every visit underlined the ravaging facts of life on those who were spared by the Mother Earth’s outburst.

The Killari quake changed the geography of eastern Marathwada overnight. More importantly, it battered the people's psyche. There are numerous stories -- of those who did not survive the quake, and those who are still living with the scars of the trag­edy fresh on their minds. Life obviously didn’t wait for them. They were dragged along and forced to make a new begin­ning, yet adjusting with post-quake life was a bundle of pain for each of them.

I have a few distinct memories of Killari. Two young sisters who were away at their mama’s place when the quake destroyed everyone and every­thing back home. It was easy to read their bewildered faces, yet it was very difficult to fathom their minds. Both had stepped out as part of a family full of life, and a week later the unemotional system had required them to return to a dead heap of rubble.

During one of my trips, I met a young boy, an engineering diploma holder, who took me to the ruins which once was his village. Walking towards the village temple, a broken yet very well kept man­sion-like structure caught my attention. What’s that, I asked my ruins-guide. That was my house, the boy said without batting his eyelid. The next bit of infor­mation was even more disturbing. The boy told me he visits his “home” every alternate day and keeps it clean. He then showed me a few masks of Gauris and idols of Ganapatis that were retrieved while clearing the debris. Those life­less idols kept under a temple tree had witnessed ten seasons since they were unearthed.

There was a widow who was staying with her 11-year old daughter. The young girl was a few months old when the ca­lamity struck the region. She remained buried along with her mother under the debris for more than six hours. Her ma-in-law did not allow rescue workers to pull her out since this young lady was “guilty” of bearing a girlchild. Now she wants her daughter to grow to be someone really “big”. Fighting with her own family, she is now the secretary of a village self-help group, and now makes speeches even before the govern­ment officials.

Every time I listen to quake-hit people, I find a common thread -- the psychologi­cal trauma. The fear is still there. People were physically rehabilitated. They got money and new houses though they were hardly keen on living in those matchbox structures. But hardly anything was done to heal the injuries the quake had inflicted on people's minds. Hundreds of these quake-hit people still prefer to sleep outside their houses. Even a decade after the quake. They still have not overcome their fear of stones. The newly seismically strengthened concrete hous­es suddenly change into monuments of fear once the sun goes down on Killari or any of the rehabilitated villages.

The Maharashtra Emergency Earth­quake Rehabilitation Programme manual published sometime in 1994 had acknowledged the sweeping fear in peo­ple's minds. The situation still remains unchanged. One among every third survivor suffers from a psychological disorder, says another report. Many still suffer depression. This inevitably had resulted in alcoholism and other addic­tions. There were instances of pseudo-pregnancies. As every tragedy inevitably spells more miseries for women, Killari too has several issues to sort out.

Why Killari alone, psychological devastation is the flip side of a process called development. Be it an irrigation dam, or a road. Prosperity is hardly shared with the people who are uprooted for “a common good”. Their lives are thrown to the winds, literally.

The world around me now is talk­ing about absence of an early warning systems, efficacy of India's disaster management plans, and new coastal regulations, yet I would like the world to hear a feeble voice calling out to respect the tenderness of the human mind and give the wisdom to start afresh. Happy New Year!

(First published in The Maharashtra Herald on December 30, 2004)