Matla sinks: Village in Sainj valley reduced to rubble as families lose homes, hope

Matla, a once-thriving village in Himachal’s Sainj Valley, now lies in ruins. A massive landslide has turned the settlement into a wasteland of rubble, uprooting nearly 70 families and tearing apart a way of life built over generations. The destruction stretches along 1.5 km, from Matla to Jakhla, where fissures in the ground widen daily. What began with cracks in a few walls has swallowed entire homes, orchards and fields.

Even the centuries-old Adi Brahma temple, long the spiritual anchor of the community, now stands precariously, surrounded by sinking land. For villagers, its possible loss symbolises the scale of devastation: not just houses, but heritage itself is under threat.

The human toll is stark. Prem, an elderly resident, watched his 19-room house, built over decades and shared by three families, collapse within moments. “I began building it in 1998. It was still unfinished, but everything went down with the land. Now we are scattered in rented rooms, struggling to survive,” he said.

For younger villagers like 33-year-old Khem Raj, the collapse has shaken faith in the permanence of home. “Our village has stood since before my great-grandparents, but nothing like this has ever happened. Even the new house I was building is gone. We now live in tents and spend nights in cattle sheds, worried about our animals,” he explained.

The administration has shifted some families into nearby schools, but conditions are grim. “Children and the elderly suffer the most,” said villager Gumat Ram. “We sleep next to cattle sheds in damaged rooms. This cannot go on for long.”

So far, more than 33 houses have been flattened, while others are too unstable to live in. The land behind the village continues to sink, making reconstruction impossible. Compensation, residents say, cannot replace their lives and roots. They are demanding permanent rehabilitation proposing the nearby NHPC dumping site as a safer ground where they can resettle without abandoning their valley.

Matla was once a patchwork of fields, orchards, and family homes that echoed with community life. Today, it is a broken landscape of tents, tarpaulins and fear. The villagers wait not just for relief, but for dignity, an assurance that they will not be left as refugees on their own land.