The sight of unstoppable darkness consuming landscapes and lifetimes in Japan is symbolic of everything we forget in our need for permanence. That nothing is. That everything we build, get attached to, identify as ‘ours’ is in fact ephemeral and can be swept away in a blink. Life reminds you of this fact again and again, sometimes with a nudge, sometimes, a tsunami. Or a flood. The kind, I witnessed from the fringes in Patiala, a city with a complex relationship with the river it derives its name from. A city that fears and loves this river in equal measure.

The flood that hit the city in the 90s did not affect me directly but in a ripple effect, its tragedies, tales of survival and heroism began to reach us from those who had battled it. I shared those memories in my tribute to Patiala, my first book Perfect Eight. I share an excerpt here with a renewed awareness that no matter how different we are, loss and pain speak to us in the same language. And that in the final analysis, walls don’t last. Only resilience and the invisible stuff of life does.

“Patiala’s resident river broke its parched banks to storm into the city. It swelled and raged, swallowed electric poles, fields and the somnolent life in the areas skirting the town. It rushed headlong into homes and broke doors and hearts and turned dreams into mud. The floods coaxed snakes nestling in the town’s muddy underbelly, to swim out in shivering streaks of motion. When the river showed no sign of abating, the army was called in. Helpless refrigerators and bodies floated past soldiers in rescue boats.

Families crouched on roofs and treetops. The edges of the town got submerged but the naturally-elevated walled city and its mohallas, one of which was ours, stayed dry. The flood, in a hurry to destroy everything in its way, passed us by to attack low-lying areas. There was no electricity in the town. The windows stayed dark through dull days and lamp-lit nights. The air stank of rotting wheat kernels in the grain market, disintegrating fruit in locked shops, soggy garbage and rain trapped within walls.

I went to the terrace sometimes and saw an occasional helicopter whirring overhead. I heard shouts of glee as the neighbourhood children jumped high and waved their hands to the invisible pilot and minister surveying the town. On a slightly bright day, Ma and I went to see the rest of the city. The heart of the town looked mangled. Quila Chowk had been turned into a refugee camp. The Shiva temple was hemmed in by limp tents. Trucks packed with large pots of khichdi and boxes full of old clothes from distant villages crowded the town square. Robust Sikhs and Hindu volunteers stirred food in cauldrons and fed the hungry.

The flood had washed away the remaining dregs of mistrust. The two communities were back to being inseparable like a nail is from the skin surrounding it. Ma and I joined the chain of volunteers and served food to endless rows and moist huddles of the displaced.

Then suddenly the rains stopped. And electricity began to show up for a few hours in the day. The distraught markets were swept clean and the heir of the erstwhile kings gave away a jewel to the river to appease it. His ancestors had prayed at Gurudwaras and to the gold-tongued goddess in the Kali temple whenever the town was in pain and he did the same. The river accepted the gift and subsided.  Soon only the stink lingered to remind the city of its many losses.”

Photograph courtesy: Global Sikh News