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Six Months On, A Skull

Some fields are barren, some have crops; cattle and the occasional farmer roam about. Nothing out of the ordinary. Everything looks essentially normal, like any rural setting anywhere in India. So why is it that, as I look around, I find myself mildly puzzled?

It takes me a while to figure it out. It's the life.

For I remember the last time I was here, last November. Then, you needed no more than a glance to know that nothing was ordinary. Nothing. The fields were visibly putrid, flooded as they had been with the great tidal wave that roared in from the sea. The only animals and humans in them were dead, killed by the cyclone that devastated Orissa on October 29 1999.

In fact, that last time in Erasama I had picked up an unconscious habit: look around constantly for the telltale whiteness of animal carcasses, the crumpled forlornness of dead men and women. Perhaps I picked it up because I went out burning bodies with a team of volunteers from Delhi, and that job meant spotting carcasses. But back in Erasama six months later, I slip unwittingly into the same sad routine, my eyes roving the landscape as they used to. No telltale whiteness or forlornness this time.

Yet the signs of disaster remain. Here where a cow's carcass must once have lain, a small pile of bleached bones. Over in that field, a prone electricity pole, its wires trailing over the arid soil and the rutted road we are on.

There, in a spot I remember clearly, the blackened remnants of a pyre, blackened round skull lying to one side just as it had six months earlier.

I passed that spot several times last November. Not once, as I did so, could I tear my eyes from that skull. Now, I am similarly incapacitated.

Nevertheless, it's true: Erasama is back to a certain normalcy. The Colorado Study Circle ("First Floor, Near Bus Stand") is bustling with No doubt studious patrons. A barber whose booth was smashed is in business again, long line of hairy customers awaiting his expert snips. Even the local pathology lab -- man at a tiny table right on the road, peering through his microscope at what he tells me are "bloodurinestoolsamples" -- is functioning.

Little shops at the town junction are stocked with crates of Pepsi and Thril ("better than Pepsi, sahib!" I'm told). In fact the guy who would run home and bring me Pepsis -- more easily available than potable water -- six months ago now has a new fridge in his tiny shop.

If the fridge and the wide smile of welcome he gives me are any indication, I must have downed more of his Pepsis then than I can now recall.

Nevertheless too, there is a faint edge to this normalcy. Across from the microscope, I step into the shell of a warehouse: rubble, shattered walls, twisted girders. A triangular section of the roof of the town's veterinary dispensary hangs on a prayer, looking like it will decapitate the patients below any second. In a stagnant pond, men and boys splash around hunting for fish, their bodies and those of the thrashing fish coated with black slime. From another stagnant pond, two large pigs come racing out, dripping black slime in gobs as they vanish in the bushes. Later, a man emerges from the same pond, two large cans filled with its water slung over his shoulder.

And unobtrusive marks here and there, labelled "HT Line, 29-10-99", bear witness to where the water rose that dreadful day. On the building that fronts the fish pond, the mark is just below the roof, a good two feet above the head of the man who stands on the verandah watching me take my photograph.

I click. I shudder.

Some hours later, we walk into the Ambiki school building. After the cyclone, this building was the base for volunteers from the International Society for Indecency Prevention, who ran a free kitchen for 3000 people from Ambiki and surrounding villages. ISIP has left their mark. Spelled out in Oriya and English on a classroom wall is their founder Kumar Bhai's vision:
A peaceful, loveful, blissful world;
An honest, sincere, disciplined society;
A decent, hopeful, useful world;
Filled with love, kindness and honesty.

Ranged under those inspiring words, some 200 kids are undergoing art therapy today. The Bhubaneswar non-governmental organisation Aaina, with guidance from a Registered Practising Art Therapist from Ahmedabad, Dr Ashok Shah, is in charge. They give the kids large sheets of paper and pencils and encourage them to draw whatever they want. "This channelises the feelings of the kids," Sneha Misra of Aaina tells us. "After all, they have their own coping strategies."

Several drawings are innocuous: trees and birds and rangoli-like patterns. But every now and then, there's one that grabs you: people neck-deep in water, or huddled on top of their huts, waving their arms for help.

"We also give the children clay," says Sneha. The last time they did that, one boy didn't know what to do with his lump. He threw it at the wall. Following his lead, the others did the same. "They get their frustrations out this way," Sneha explains. "When they throw the clay, they are really asking: 'Why me? Why did I have to suffer so much?'"

Dance therapy was to follow. Too bad we couldn't stay to watch that. Instead, we found our way to Japa village, where a food-for-work programme is operating. It is run by the Centre for Youth and Social Development, another Bhubaneswar NGO.

One of the CYSD staff shows me some charts detailing the progress of the FFW programme. Two columns, in particular, are of interest: "Work" and "Purpose". Some entries I found there: "Road to temple" has its purpose listed as "Communicate to temple". "Pond renovation" was done for "Drinking and cooking for cow and human also". The "Road to riverside" was necessary for "Communication and irrigation".

Then there is "Non-Formal Education House construction". Purpose: "To read better". And why this second "Pond renovation"? "To bathe better."

Lying awake in bed that night, I still remember the last time I was here. Even drowned in colossal tragedy, Erasama then was suffused with an optimistic, energetic spirit. It came from the indefatigable volunteers from all over India, and abroad, plugging away uncomplainingly at the tasks that had to be done. There was a quiet determination in the air, a desire to make something out of the mess. Something new and different. I returned from Erasama in November awed by the enormity of the tragedy, certainly, but also oddly charged with that spirit. In a curious way, the best few days of my life.

Six months on, in contrast, Erasama restored leaves me dejected. Precisely because it is normal: that old and familiar normal. This is a grubby little town like every other grubby little town in India. Chaos, dust, pigs and oozing wastewater are everywhere.

No more volunteers, though there are the NGOs working on rehabilitation. But while they are all busy with undoubtedly vital tasks -- art therapy included -- today there is a haphazardness in the air. Things are nowhere near as planned and coordinated as the November relief operations - even amid the chaos -- were. Reports come in of overlapping food-for-work programmes in some areas, none in others. A thoughtful plan to rehabilitate widows and orphans got going in January, but the NGO involved is caught in inexplicable delays that have left the programme floundering. The lack of progress means other villagers are beginning to resent the preferential treatment they think widows and orphans get. And tales of thievery of relief material are whispered widely. One day that I am there, several missing packets of utensils for cyclone victims are found stashed in a cupboard at the panchayat office. Courtesy the peon.

Just the usual. Yes, Erasama is back, but is that spirit gone? Is the chance to turn tragedy into something new also gone?

Dilip D'Souza