Kerala Flood- A Long Way Home

The challenge of rebuilding houses

- Reema Abraham/Alappuzha

In the dark of the night, when green Kuttanad transforms into clusters of luminous dots on water, a small country boat from the Kainakary panchayat begins its cruise on an easterly course. On it is a family of three, with a couple of vessels, a lantern and cattlefeed. Their destination is a two-storey house, away from the water, away from the flood, where they would spend the night. In the wee hours of the morning, they would wake up and go find their cow Paru on the high ground where she is tied. They feed her and milk her— their only source of income now. The other, the paddy farms—that Kuttanad is famous for—have been inundated as the bunds breached one after the other.

It is not the snakes—brought down by the floodwaters—that force them to take this journey to safer shores every night. It is the fear that their submerged house, now cleaned, would collapse in on them while they sleep.

Ponnappan, who is hearing and speech-impaired, his wife Radhamony and their teenaged son Akhil were aghast when they returned home from the flood relief camp. The small concrete house had cracks of all sizes on almost every wall, floor and even the basement. We noticed Ponnappan gesturing to inside the house, then at Radhamony and then swaying his hands, pointing to the house. “He is trying to tell you how shocked he was, the day he saw this house shaking in the windy rain,” said Radhamony. “We had come in a boat from the camp; I could take the boat right inside the flooded house. And, then I heard him making loud noises and crying, from outside the house. “The whole house was swaying and wobbling in the strong wind.”

They knew that they would not sleep there anymore. “I asked the people in the two-storey house if we could spend the night on the verandah but they asked us in,” said Radhamony.

SHATTERED AND BATTERED