Life after Hudhud In continuation to my previous post, I would like to share some of the major incidents that I have experienced in the past one week. When the cyclone calmed down, everyone believed that it was over. But it was not. Hudhud had deceived Vizagites. It returned again within an hour. No one had expected this. People were slowly coming out of their houses and seeing the devastation caused by Hudhud. Among all this, a group of boys were roaming around and they came near a kirana store opposite to our house. The kirana store had two refrigerators outside the shop that they could not place inside the shop due to lack of space. The winds of Hudhud were so strong that one of the refrigerators had fallen down and the glass of the refrigerator had broken. From my place, as we could see, it looked like the group of boys were lifting the refrigerator and placing it back. But what happened next was shocking. They were not trying to place the refrigerator back to its place but were breaking the glass even more so that they could steal the cold drink bottles!!! As the group of boys succeeded in their attempt, more people joined them and finally all the bottles were stolen. People from my apartment and the other apartments informed the owners of the kirana store. By the time they reached the shop, the boys were trying to break the other refrigerator!! It was strange to see this kind of behavior at a time of crisis. I have read in books, that in time of riots and calamities people attack each other and each other’s property. But for the first time I had seen this. It was shocking. Another incident that I want to share is related to our basic needs. Since the power supply snapped due to the strong winds, there was no way that the apartments could get water supply. One day, we could manage with the water that was stored. But the worry began from the next day. We were lucky that there is a hand pump near our apartment. But there was an enormously long line near the hand pump and we could not decide when to join the line. Moreover, there was a chawl near the hand pump and they were the ones who would use the hand pump on a regular basis. They disliked the presence of apartment people there which is understandable. Next they started the fountain of questions. You people don’t have a generator? What about the municipal water connection? Etc etc.. Well I would say, the hand pump was our new social networking site during that one week after Hudhud. It was the best place to get the most important updates. One could get all those updates that even Akashvani could not provide. Oh yes! Akashvani.. the only way to get news. After many days, had we taken out the radio and were tuning for Prasar Bharati. Life was different. Some of my friends term it as the Paleolithic life but I would say though tough there was a different kind of joy in it. :)

In conti

There were just too many things that I wanted to share about Hudhud and so this blog post. Cyclones are not new to Visakhapatnam and neither are Vizagites unaware of the measures that should be taken during a cyclonic storm. Over the last few years we have faced several cyclones and even the Tsunami. Vizag has been lucky every time to have suffered minimal damage. Even the Tsunami could hardly cause any devastation to Vizag. The reason being, the Dolphin Nose. It has always protected the city from any kind of damage from cyclones, storms and tsunami. But this time Destiny was not on the side of the City of destiny. When the news of the Hudhud approaching the Vizag city was flashing in news channels everyone thought, "Oh! just another cyclone. Nothing to worry." We had become complacent and did not take the cyclone warnings by IMD seriously. Who had ever thought that this one cyclone would cause so much devastation that the City is beyond recognition. I shall begin with Saturday night, the 11th of October, the winds which were blowing slowly in the evening, were now blowing with increased speeds and it created a chilly feeling. By the time I went to bed I could hear the wind making scary noises outside. It was difficult to ignore the winds and go to sleep. I woke up thrice from my sleep due to the noise made by wind. Power was cut in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I was woken up by my mom who was clearly very scared with the environment outside. All the windows of our house were closed and the wind was banging on them as if it was trying its level best to enter in our house. If this was the condition of the apartments, how could people in kuchcha houses survive. Good that the government had evacuated them beforehand. We then started feeling slight tremors. Initially we did not want to accept that there were tremors but then the intensity of the tremors increased and all we could do is hold hands and pray that the building does not fall. There was no way that we could leave our houses and go out, nor could we stay inside. Before the tremors there was network and I was able to connect to a few friends and found that the cyclone had effected every area of the city in almost the same manner. The window panes were trembling and they were filled pieces of leaves from the trees surrounding our house. The last cyclone had led to the uprooting of two of the tallest trees beside my room and this time I feared more trees would be uprooted. The complete scenario was like that of English movies. It was something like a monster was trying to attack us in every possible way and we were clinging on to each other in the hope that all of us would survive. There were shrieks and cries of people and sounds of glass panes breaking down. In the initial stages of the cyclone everyone was worrying about the materialistic things we own, later the fear was for surviving through the cyclone. All of us were only praying that the cyclone would stop. The cyclone was like the waves of the ocean, there would be a pause for a few moments and then again the gushing of the wind could be heard. This continued till 12:30pm. Then after a few moments it appeared like the wind had calmed down and the cyclone was over. People were skeptical to step out of their houses. In another ten minutes, most of us were out in our balconies to see the worst condition of our locality.