Fourteen years ago in November, I was in Odisha when the cyclone hit the coast. Co-incidentally it was Durga Pooja even then. It was a surreal experience. Winds lashing at 118 miles an hour coupled with heavy rains. Water had filled into the flat that I was living in. Within hours we were disconnected from the rest of the world. No phones, no electricity, no food stock, no water.
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Only potatoes and flour to hopefully survive on. While waiting, I saw the worst and the best of humanity. Saw neighbors sharing water with those that didn’t have any, saw the winds tearing up a locked apartment as it tried to escape, shattering every glass pane in the house, saw man’s greed take over as he sold each candle for 80 rupees, saw death floating in the water. saw Kaali’s home submerged in the flood, and also saw what it was like to say goodbye to loved ones (this, when I didn’t think I would come back alive).
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Luckily I was among the few to board the first train that left Bhuvaneshwar after almost 5-6 days. There were only about a handful of people on that long train and the journey that should have taken about eight hours to reach Tata Nagar, took us 32 hours as the train waded through mayhem on the tracks. I finally made it to civilization and only realized the full extent of the wrath of Mother Nature, when I switched on the television that night. As I recall that day today, I also pray that the people in Odisha and elsewhere survive Phalin’s wrath which has been unleashed.
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Insia Dariwala is a graduate from F.I.T New York (Advertising and Mass communications), loves to tell stories and is a filmmaker. ‘The Candy Man’ (www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSr0ne-iizs) her hard hitting debut film on child abuse won her two ‘Best Director’ awards in India (2009, 2010) and also got nominated at Barcelona International Film Festival and the New York Short film Festival in 2010.