Since the flood III

Hi, remember my father's right-hand man, Kumar? He has a new crew now and they have mastered the art of building ad hoc wooden stages for tragedy-stricken households.  

Here's my father fitting a net to the fishing apparatus. Fishing is a good pastime.

It offers some respite from the hardship.

But not for our younger sister who's still in (a very strict and competitive) school and needs to attend online classes every day. 

Despite the difficulties, life has to go on. What else is the wooden stage for?

And so it becomes the kitchen,

the temporary dock,

a pavilion for the weary,

and the site of our all-out stand.

Passersby

Making timelapse videos of people who walk through the road in front of our house is another pastime. This guy is going somewhere to fish.

This one had come to check on his house. 

This man is going to get more bricks to put under bedposts. 

And these ladies are leaving for some relative's place. 

Food

Chickpeas, moong, peanuts, almonds, and raisins in the morning. Check. The only problem is that there's no space for you to do push-ups.

Still better than the food they served at the quarantine facility. 

Flattened rice, jackfruit, milk, and jaggery. Not sure about its actual nutritional value but all of us agreed while having this breakfast that eating food that looks and smells good is necessary during a flood. Your mind gives up before your body.

Ridge gourd, fried fish and chicken, and rice.

I'd walked 6 kilometres, parts of it in knee-deep waters, before taking this photo. After devouring the boiled chicken, I immediately fell on the rice meal in the next photo.

Fish deep fried, fish in curry, and a lot of rice.  Later that afternoon, I visited my grandmother, wading nose-deep icy cold waters, and caught a fever at night.

This too is boiled chicken but with ghost chillies. Looks ghastly and tastes like hellfire.

The house

Okay, sensitive topic. I don't know how to caption these.

Of all the books damaged during the floods over the years, the most precious one has to be a collection of nursery rhymes I'd read as a child: Hiren Bhattacharyya's Akou Dhemali. 

The lower shelves need to be filled with bricks in order to make the structure stable during the flood. Otherwise, the entire thing begins to float and eventually topples over. 

View from my bed one morning.

It's difficult during the drier seasons to imagine your household space under-water even if you've had to face it year in, year out for decades. Also, do you see the bricks under the bedposts? That's what the man from the timelapse needs the bricks for. 

Animals

The first to be displaced in a flood are the earthworms. They probably have the highest death toll as well.

This baby frog is having a field day. 

When the floods begin to subside, shoals of fishes make their way back to the river through specific routes. It's a whole thing. We caught a lot of Naro fish one day and it's possible that our courtyard was on one such route.

A baby Bhokua. An adult can get as huge as 30 kilograms. Released it after taking the photo.

Random dog sleeping on a pile of bricks after it got kicked out of the higher grounds by other strays. 

OG, Kani, and Hopeless, on the other hand, were very patient and understanding this time. Several floods have taught them a few lessons too. 

What kind of an Animal is this?

Harvest

When part of the harvest gets submerged, you need to take it out and ship it to an open space asap and dry it to prevent it from sprouting.

The moisture induces the germination process and the seeds release an incredible amount of heat making it painful to stand there and work with a rake or a similar tool. 

You obviously have to pay the boatmen and the labourers. 

Later, you sell it for cheaper than the standard rate. 

The adventure of two ghost chillies

Put all your flower pots far above the water but don't forget to water them regularly.

These two chilli peppers matured around the same time in two neighbouring plants.

One day, both of them were plucked and taken to various places

before getting shredded to pieces and put in boiling water.

Friends

Uncle and aunts from my mother's extended family. 

This is their veranda. When you stand in the water for too long, the soles of your feet begin to rot.  

The owners of this kitchen know it very well. They've left everything behind to live with their relatives until the waters subside. 

Kids around here generally have a more upbeat attitude.

And the old saying comes true time and again during the floods: each of us has a kid in them.

But even for the real kids,

the work don't stop, the grind don't stop, geddit?  (hint: these guys are returning from a rice mill)

The local dock.

I bumped into my cousin at my grandmother's house. The water had been rising steadily and his eight-months pregnant wife needed to go somewhere safe. She sat on a banana raft and we pushed it to the dock.

Mission accomplished. 

This one is a fish pretending to be human.

Friends but of a seasonal kind

I wasn't home when these reporters came. My mother took these photos. She made them tea before giving an interview which was later aired on TV. She spoke very well.

"Hiii Frandz, went to a flood affected area to do reporting! Very bad situation."

My father sips tea.

Mud

When the water receded, we got extremely busy and I took very few photos. Sorry.

Pardonable, I hope, considering all the mud we had to get rid of.

There were three waves of flooding this year and most of what you've seen above also happened thrice. 

The river

The source of our woes

and joy.

I saw a river dolphin moments after taking this photo.




Fin.



Part I ( written in 2017)  here.
Part II (written in 2017)  here