Reminiscing Cyclones In Odisha: Eye On The Storm

Bhubaneswar: All eyes are on Cyclone Jawad. I’m also following the news closely.

I have been in Odisha — in its capital, Bhubaneswar — only during two cyclones: October 29, 1999’s Super Cyclone and, not many will remember, the severe cyclone that made landfall near Gopalpur in Ganjam district 12 days before the Super Cyclone. I grew up in Bhubaneswar but have lived outside the state since 2000.

In 1999, I worked as a copy editor at a newspaper office. I was in my twenties and only a year old in the profession. On the day the cyclone made landfall near Gopalpur in the evening, we — Sandeep (now Group Editor of Odisha Bytes), Kaushik (another journalist-friend), Elisa (who now writes a column in Odisha Bytes), a few other colleagues and I — were in office at Mancheswar, Bhubaneswar. It was night. It had started raining in the city. We were busy with the edition. The main story was, of course, the cyclone. We were not thinking about the rain yet. It was outside. We were inside, dry and protected.

Elisa left a bit early in a car. The rain was yet to pick up. Past 1 am or so, finally, it was time to go home. As it was raining heavily, we gathered at the office door and perhaps discussed whether we should wait or leave. We decided to go. We had two-wheelers. We had ridden home in rain before. We were not worried.

But we had barely covered 1-2 km, past a railway level crossing in Mancheswar, the rain seemed different from any other we had experienced. It was coming in sheets and columns, so dense giant opaque curtains of water blocked our vision. We couldn’t see anything even a few inches ahead. Water was hitting my eyes like a jet. No amount of wiping was able to drain it. Like a ship-wrecked sailor, I felt I was drowning. Like a rogue sea wave that sometimes leaves you shaken and bruised, I checked if the rogue ‘waves’ from the sky had caused any damage to me: whether I still could see, whether I had fractured a leg or an arm, whether I could still breathe, whether I had separated from Sandeep and Kaushik. At that moment, maybe I wished for a life jacket. I missed the comfort of home.

After all these years, I feel the right thing to do that night was to return to the safety of office. The shore that was our office was not very far behind. We could still ‘swim’ back to its safety. Our homes were still far away, mine was the farthest, about 12-15 km from office.

But we were young. We pressed ahead for home. The perils of “get-home-it-is” was still unknown to me. Besides, Sandeep was to leave for Ganjam the next morning to cover the cyclone.

We finally reached Sandeep’s house in Vani Vihar. My two-wheeler had by then ingested so much water that its engine coughed several times and died. Thankfully, we had reached Sandeep’s place by then.

But there was no way to know how much water I had ingested. How many minutes more before my body shuts down! Having visions of hypothermia, I gulped down the hot tea his mother served us all at that hour. It seemed a life saviour.

Feeling slightly better, I tried to restart my two-wheeler. After wrestling with it for about an hour, when I tried all sorts of ‘jugaad’ I had learnt, even sprinting with it for a considerable distance, the engine surged to life. Kaushik and I decided to press for home once again. There was not a soul on the road that stretched for miles ahead. We could see falling sheets of rain illuminated by rows of neon streetlights. Even the street dogs which chased us every night had disappeared. The scene looked foreboding and ominous. But we were still two people and could face the danger together.

Why were we on the road that night when most people were at home? We weren’t even like the mail pilots of aviation’s early days, who disregarded their own safety to fly through night storms (Night Flight). Perhaps, on that night, the adventurous spirit of mail pilots had taken over us.

It is said that if you want to spot a journalist in a crowd, the easiest way is, when most people will be fleeing from the scene, a journalist will be moving towards the scene. Maybe, the answer lay in that.

Finally, we reached Kaushik’s house in BJB Nagar. Sandeep safely home. Kaushik safely home. Only I was left. My house was not very far away but I was on my own now.
This was home-stretch. In a few minutes, I would be home. I pressed ahead once again, through semi-lit bylanes I was so familiar with. About 200 metres from home, I stopped. An uprooted tree blocked the road. In weather like this, you need a lot of luck to make it safely. I thought I had exhausted mine that night. In one last burst of energy, I began a detour and was finally home.

I was over 200 km away from Ganjam, experiencing not the full impact of the cyclone but only its afterwash. But, to quote a favourite author, I felt like a Sorcerer’s apprentice that night.

During the Super Cyclone 12 days later, I was at home. We stayed up the entire night. It was impossible to sleep as extremely strong winds whistled and pounded the house all night. The pounding, which began in the evening, stopped around 10 the next morning.

We visited Puri quite sometime after Cyclone Fani. The destruction was still fresh. We saw the damage at Bhubaneswar railway station itself. Platform roofs peeled off as if the place was strafed by bombers. Uprooted and bent metal scaffoldings and billboards dotted the Bhubaneswar-Puri highway. Hotels on the beach had suffered extensive damage. Power supply to the town was yet to be restored and, after sundown, the beachfront was completely dark. I have been going to Puri beach for as long as I can remember but never did it look so uninviting.