A handful of castaways

Chinmay Kumar Hota

The images of marooned villages in the recent floods in Assam and Bihar brought back memories of another flood that I had experienced long ago. When I reached my new place of posting, a hamlet tucked somewhere in the Mahanadi delta notorious for its floods and cyclones, I knew that life wouldn't be easy there. The office head greeted me with a hearty smile. Soon I realised that my superior's warmth was only the reflection of his elation at seeing his liberator. Earlier, his request for leave had been turned down for want of a reliever. By mid-afternoon, he was gone, all smiles despite the rainy weather.

The non-stop rains made things cheerless for me. Stranded in office, I decided to make the most of the resources at hand, such as the canteen boy, Raghu, who would cook and the concrete roof that would provide us shelter. What more did one need to survive? I offered myself solace with the thought that I would step out once the weather turned sunny.

The sunny day was nowhere in sight. On the third day of my arrival, I was alerted that flood waters would soon enter the area. I looked out to find the ground completely waterlogged. Raghu suggested that it was time to move to the upper floor, and we went up.

“It’s time to move still higher up,” Raghu declared in the evening, pointing to the open terrace above. Luckily, the rain had stopped as we hauled a steel cupboard filled with important papers and currency notes to the top of the staircase. We also pulled two benches to sleep on under the night sky.

After having a makeshift dinner on the terrace, both of us fell asleep in no time. Late at night, I woke up with a jerk and looked around. The terrace was awash in bright silvery moonlight, and the night was eerily silent without the usual croaking of frogs or chirping of crickets. I went to the edge and peered down to find that the water level was barely a couple of feet from where I stood. The sight of the flooded world on that full-moon night was magical. Nothing I saw looked remotely familiar. A huge white blanket of frothy water covered everything in view in that moon-washed darkness. Water stretched all around. I stood transfixed at the mystical face of nature.

 My reverie was broken by some movement from the other end of the terrace. I was surprised to see some people huddled at a corner— refugees from nature’s fury. Their boat, tied to a pole, was floating on the water.  They too got up from their sleep hearing my footsteps. The hapless castaways were apologetic for their trespass, not realising I was myself a refugee from nature's ferocity. I comforted them by asking them to stay on and walked to another side of the terrace.

What I saw made the heart skip a beat. A pair of cobras was slithering hastily away at a little distance, possibly disturbed by my footsteps. I returned to my bench choosing not to frighten off these castaways too.