India cyclone ravaged memories as well as land

People lost everything they had in Ersama, Orissa in the 1999 "super-cyclone."
People lost everything they had in Ersama, Orissa in the 1999 “super-cyclone.”

Thinking of the 12 milion Indians who are bearing the brunt of Cyclone Phallin. Here is a piece I wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1999, after the last deadly cyclone in the state of Orissa.

November 25, 1999

Bhubaneshwar, India — I had been to Orissa before, lured by its ancient Hindu temples and pristine beaches.

This time, I was not a tourist.

I was there to witness a tragedy of enormous proportions. A “super cyclone” had visited the state just days before my trip. And it had changed the face of Orissa.

The plane ride from Calcutta to Bhubaneswar, Orissa’s capital, took 50 minutes. Indian Airlines Flight 7544 from Calcutta steadied itself after a steep climb into a clear November sky. We were more than halfway there when the captain announced, “We are flying over Paradwip. It’s to our left.”

On Oct. 29, the cyclone, having churned across the Bay of Bengal, came ashore at Paradwip. Wind and sea had spared little. I had read newspaper accounts about the devastation, and so had everyone else on the plane.

The very mention of Paradwip had nearly all the passengers on the right side of the cabin up from their seats. We craned our necks to peer out the windows and see firsthand what we already knew.

From 15,000 feet, the landscape resembled a blueprint for destruction. A vast sheet of silver-blue iridescence cut into the green mosaic of rice paddies and farmlands. Helicopters skimmed over the flooded land below us. Perhaps they were making air drops of food to cyclone victims.

Suddenly, the plane was filled with comments, sighs and emotions. Curiosity. Uncertainty. Fear.

As the aircraft descended, I saw the massive steel bridge over the Mahanadi River that I had crossed by train only months before on my way to the beach at Gopalpur. Then Orissa had seemed so lush, so serene, so idyllic. Now it was a series of mangled fields and broken trees, bare of bark and branches.

In the chaotic arrival hall at Bhubaneswar’s small airport, people held up placards to connect with arriving relief workers, journalists, government officials and medical teams. Boxes full of bottled drinking water rotated on the luggage carousel. People had come prepared to face the shortages. I wondered whether our six bottles of water would suffice.

orissa1Outside, the hoards of white taxis that normally await arriving tourists were in short supply. Instead, a line of four-wheel drive vehicles crowded the curb. Several bore the Red Cross symbol.

It wasn’t a long ride to the Hotel Shishmo, which had recently undergone minor renovation. I remembered it as being shoddier on my last trip to Bhubaneshwar, four years ago. It was the only thing I saw this time that looked better.

Eugene, my colleague and guide, and I wanted to grab a quick lunch before venturing into the city. At the hotel restaurant, we were told that the only thing available was a limited buffet, since many of the kitchen staff had returned to their villages to check on their families. The mediocre meal cost twice what it would have in Calcutta, but there wasn’t another restaurant open for miles.

Bhubaneswar, which was a relatively new but disheveled town before the storm, looked utterly dismal. Its dirty roads were even dirtier. Its nondescript architecture seemed uglier. Many of its tall palms stood no more. A confusion of electric lines dangled overhead as our taxi negotiated pools of mud and slush around the city’s shantytowns.

For the people who live in these slums, life had already been unimaginably difficult. Now it was plain unimaginable.

Still, the urban shantytowns were better off than the thousands of small hamlets and villages that fell prey to the cyclone. Tens of thousands of people died; no one knows exactly how many. Millions more were left with nothing to their names but the wet dirt on which they were standing.

These were India’s poorest, most vulnerable people, and they had been left in their mud huts to ride out one of the fiercest storms in the subcontinent’s history. A man in a nearby hospital had held onto the trunk of a palm tree through 36 hours of rain and wind. He survived but he had no flesh left on either arm.

On the way to Kendrapara the next day, we stopped for breakfast at the Indian equivalent of a truck stop. We were told there would be no more food available beyond that point. We sat in a dark, dingy dining hall — there was no electricity — and filled our stomachs with sand-laden rice cakes and vegetable curry. We planned to never eat there again.

But we did — out of necessity. And 10 exhausting hours later, the same rice cakes and curry seemed gourmet fare.

We thought about the villagers with whom we had spoken, and of how they had mobbed relief trucks for food and were surviving on one scanty meal a day. One man showed us his stash of rice carefully wrapped in a towel. He had gathered the grains from the road when a bag of supplies had burst.

In Paradwip and Ersama, names now synonymous with death, we had watched a young woman wash herself in a pool of water while a few yards away, another young woman’s body, bloated and rotting, floated along the bank. We saw the charred remains of human beings at mass funeral pyres, and we inhaled death. We looked into the eyes of a child who will grow up without his parents — and without hope.

After seeing all that, conversation in our taxi stopped for a long time. I found myself clutching my bottle of water and not wanting to look anymore.

But the images still burned in my mind. I left Orissa two weeks ago; soon I will return home to Atlanta, leaving India far behind. And this time, a very different Orissa will smolder in my memory.

Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani

One reason I miss India terribly: my pishi (aunt).
One reason I miss India terribly: my pishi (aunt).

“When did you get home?” a friend asked me yesterday.

“Last night,” I replied.

“It must feel good to be back,” she said.

The pause on the phone was long enough to be awkward.

“Yes,” I said. I wanted the conversation to end.

But what was home? That word has always been problematic for me. I have always straddled two continents, two cultures, a feat that becomes hard at times like this.

My closest friend Eugene in Kolkata and I used to discuss for long hours what being home meant. Was it in Atlanta, where I have lived for 23 years, where I work, where I laugh and love? Or is it in my native India, where I am not an “other” or a minority, where I can bask in my Indianness, where I am in my element like I can never be in America?

After my parents died in 2001, going “home” to India became emotionally exhausting. Kolkata was not the same without my Ma and Baba waiting for me at our flat on Ballygunj Circular Road. Some of my trips after that were short — I was but a tourist on a fleeting journey. Others were punctuated by weddings and funerals and other events that made them extraordinary.

This time, it was different.

Another reason I miss home: the incredible food.
Another reason I miss home: the incredible food. This is Sunday lunch at my aunt’s house in Delhi.

I spent a lot of time with my father’s sister, my pishi, in Kolkata and his brother and his wife in Delhi. My uncle and aunt are the only two of my father’s seven siblings who are still living. Three of my aunts and uncles died in painfully rapid succession in the last year and a half.

I felt a need to soak up my family as much as I could.

I was also on assignment for CNN for part of the time I was home. I found it refreshing to report on my own people for a change and to work alongside Indian journalists.

Now, I am back at my desk at CNN Center in Atlanta. I look at the sun and think that it also shone over India today, many hours earlier. I smell India in my notebooks and clothes and long to make that long plane journey back.

I am an American by nationality and in many ways, by identity. Yet my heart remains Indian. Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani. 

Vivek Singh

vivek

I just returned from a short trip to a part of central India that was previously unfamiliar — Gadchiroli District in the state of Maharashtra. I was there to report a rape story for CNN and traveled with CNN cameraman Sanjiv Talreja and producer Harmeet Shah Singh.

Photojournalist Vivek Singh also accompanied us. He’s a freelancer based in Delhi and we’ve used his work on CNN’s photo blog. I edited the text that ran with an amazing gallery about rising tensions between Bodo tribespeople and Bengali Muslims in northeastern India. It was refreshing to see journalism from India that goes far beyond the breathless and sensational stuff that is common in the media here.

Vivek’s work is hauntingly beautiful. Powerful. Sometimes stark in black and white. It’s difficult to take your eyes off his images. I was lucky he was able to make it to Gadchiroli with us.

Check out Vivek’s work here:

http://www.viveksinghphotography.com/#/home?i=1710

Casualty

HeaneySeamus Heaney died today. The New York Times headline described him as “Irish poet of soil and strife.”

I don’t pretend to always understand poetry though I savor it. I am always awed by how poets use language in such an artful way. My favorite poet of all time remains Pablo Neruda, who is simply magical to me. Seamus Heaney was another writer I have admired for a long time.

The world has lost another terrific writer today.

Here is my favorite verse by Heaney from his poem, “Casualty.”

It was a day of cold
Raw silence, wind-blown
surplice and soutane:
Rained-on, flower-laden
Coffin after coffin
Seemed to float from the door
Of the packed cathedral
Like blossoms on slow water.
The common funeral
Unrolled its swaddling band,
Lapping, tightening
Till we were braced and bound
Like brothers in a ring.

Happy Birthday

My mother and me at the Acropolis in Greece. June 23, 1964.
My mother and me at the Acropolis in Greece. June 23, 1964.

My mother would have turned 82 today. I would have picked up the phone and called her. 011-91-33-2247-6600.

I would have said: Ma! Happy Birthday. I would have asked her what she was doing to celebrate.

She would have said that my pishi (aunt) was coming over for lunch. Nothing special was planned.

I wold have asked about what else was going on. She would have given me family updates — she kept in touch with everyone. She was the glue. She would have caught me up with gossip about the neighbors in our flat building.

She would have hurried through the conversation to get to the most important part. When will you come to Kolkata?

I would have said: In mid-September, Ma. I will be there soon.

I would have imagined her smile. She would have told me how she couldn’t wait to see me.

I will get on a plane to go home next week but she won’t be there waiting for me.

Happy Birthday, beautiful Ma. I miss you every waking moment.

Every day is Memorial Day

John Alderman, who was captain of Mike's cavalry troop in Iraq, at the grave Thursday.
John Alderman, who was captain of Mike’s cavalry troop in Iraq, at the grave Thursday.

Thursday evening, I drove out to Loganville, Georgia. I suppose it’s not a tremendous distance from downtown Atlanta but during rush hour, it took me more than an hour before I turned right onto Georgia Highway 81, named the Michael Stokely Memorial Highway.

It was the eighth anniversary of Mike’s death.

He went to Iraq with the 48th Infantry Brigade and was killed by a bomb in the Iraqi town of Yusufiya. I covered his memorial service in Iraq and later, when I returned home, I wrote about his father, Robert Stokely, and how he coped with his son’s death. I visited Mike’s grave with Robert one year after Mike died. Friends and family gathered to remember the fallen soldier at the exact time of his death. 2:20 a.m. in Iraq.

Over the years, I kept in touch with Robert; quoted him in several of my Iraq stories and wrote a longer piece about his own journey to Yusufiya a couple of years ago. He felt he would never have closure until he touched the dirt where his son fell. That journey did not turn out as Robert had planned it but it was healing nevertheless. You can read the story on CNN.com.

Michael Stokely was killed in Iraq in August 2005.
Michael Stokely was killed in Iraq in August 2005.

I’ve always felt grateful to Robert for sharing the details of his punctured life. It’s important, I believe, for America to know it has helped others cope with their grief.

Not too many people showed up this year for the annual gathering at Mike’s grave. As Robert said, people move on with their lives. We said our hellos and made conversation. It had already rained Thursday and the clouds looked down at us with a threat of more to come. We talked about how it was unusually cool for August, almost chilly, how it has rained so much this summer that Robert didn’t have to buy gallon jugs of water to keep the grass green over Mike’s grave.

There was nothing formal about the gathering. Just family and friends remembering Mike and reflecting on the path our lives have taken.

Robert and me at a November screening of an HLN documentary about his trip back to Iraq.
Robert and me at a November screening of an HLN documentary about his trip back to Iraq.

Before I began covering the Iraq War at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I never called anyone in uniform a friend. But now I know many people in the military. Before, I was like many Americans who are oblivious to the toll of war. Not any more.

On the way home on 1-20, I thought about Robert standing on the ground above his son’s coffin. He asked everyone to remember the men and women who gave their lives fighting for their country. To many, he said, they are just soldiers. To us, they are sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.

Today is not Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day but for families like the Stokelys, every day is one of remembrance.

The price of independence

Independence turned bloody as uprooted Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs crossed borders.
Independence turned bloody as Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs crossed borders.

It’s too bad “Midnight’s Children” was a bust at the box office. I’m thinking that Deepa Mehta was perhaps the wrong director to give us the celluloid depiction of Salman Rushdie’s terrific book, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.

The protagonist and narrator of Rushdie’s story, Saleem Sinai, is born at the exact moment when India gained independence from Britain. The film, had it been a success, might have broadened knowledge of the painful history of my homeland, just like “Gandhi” had done years before. “Gandhi” won various Oscars in 1983, including best picture.

At 11:57 p.m. on August 14, 1947, the nation of Pakistan was born, carved out of land that was a part of British India. Five minutes later, at 12:02 a.m. on August 15, India was declared a free nation. To all my Pakistani and Indian friends: Happy Independence Day.

That independence came with a steep price. British India was partitioned along religious and political lines. Pakistan became the Muslim homeland and Muslims living in lndia crossed borders on the west and east. At the same time, Hindus and Sikhs in the new Pakistan made the trek to India. At least 10 million people were uprooted from their homes; some estimates say it was as many as 25 million.

It was far from peaceful, far from what Mahatma Gandhi, the father of non-violence had anticipated.

Hindus and Muslims butchered each other. Sometimes, entire trains from Punjab to Pakistan arrived with seats and bunks awash in red. Or vice versa. Women were raped; children slaughtered. There are no exact counts of the dead; just an estimate of 250,000 to 2 million.

Gandhi’s non-violent revolution turned exceedingly bloody. Brother against brother. Blood spilled in the name of religion.

My father’s generation remembers that ugly time in our history. His family was displaced from their home in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and started over in Calcutta. I heard stories from him and his friends and other Indians I have met from that era.

Atlanta physician Khalid Siddiq was one of those people. He told me he boarded a crowded train in New Delhi with his parents and four siblings to make a terrifying two-day journey through the farmlands of Punjab.

“I was very young but I think I understood what was happening,” he told me. “I could see the fear and anguish on my father’s face. It was a terrifying experience for everybody.”

Sohan Manocha told me he witnessed hundreds of killings as a young Hindu boy in Punjab. “That kind of horror leaves memories that are hard to erase, ” he said.

The stories of the painful birth of India and Pakistan are dying with the people who lived it. I am sorry I never recorded my conversations with people I knew.

Luckily, an oral history project, 1947 Partition Archive, is doing just that.

“The 1947 Partition Archive is a people-powered non-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving and sharing eye-witness accounts from all ethnic, religious and economic communities affected by the Partition of British India in 1947,” the website says. “We provide a platform for anyone anywhere in the world to collect, archive and display oral histories that document not only Partition, but pre-Partition life and culture as well as post-Partition migrations and life changes.”

I’m glad someone took the time to preserve history.

It’s especially important since tensions between India and Pakistan have never settled.

Just last week, five Indian soldiers were killed last week along the heavily militarized Line of Control, the de facto border in the disputed region of Kashmir. Since then skirmishes have flared tension between the two rival nations. Again. (India and Pakistan have already fought two full-scale wars over Kashmir, which Pakistan argues should have been a part of the newly formed Muslim nation in 1947.)

So on this Independence Day, I remember all those lives that were lost in the making of free nations, in the making of our destinies.

Reach for the Sky

Last weekend, I went to a trunk show of jewelry crafted by my friend Anubha Jayaswal. She’s a friend from my hometown, Kolkata; her husband Vishal loves Bengali food more than I do. That’s true homage to the cuisine of my culture.

Anubha works in the frenzied world of finance but when she has spare time, she makes jewelry. Check out her stuff on her Sky Jewelry page on Facebook.

I bought a couple of pieces and enjoyed the afternoon talking with desi girls who, like me, are not big fans of the ornate gold stuff you see in Indian wedding photos.

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