By Dr George Jacob
Kochi, Aug 12, 2020: Natural beauty, superlative health standards comparable to Scandinavia, cent percent education, low crime rates and communally tolerant citizens had crowned Kerala with the title ‘God’s own country.’
But soon social evils such as increasing crime especially against women and substance abuse and alcoholism had shadowed Kerala’s merit for that crown. However, people’s responses to two heartrending tragedies on August 7 helped the southern Indian state regain the status.
These disasters struck when Kerala was up against two odds-monsoon and a highly contagious pandemic. Kerala had been at the receiving end of two back-to-back floods in 2018 and 2019. Earlier in 2017, Cyclone Ockhi too wasn’t merciful to Kerala. The state had stood up to ‘elements in foul mood’ with considerable resilience.
Kerala had only one prayer on her lips this year: to be spared of yet another destructive monsoon. The seasonal phenomenon had habitually been corroding her fragile economy, spreading disease, and causing death, denying people of happiness and merrymaking. It looks like Malayalees won’t be celebrating Onam (Kerala’s harvest festival) for third consecutive year, much to the disappointment of farmers, vegetable and flower vendors.
A massive landslide took unsuspecting tea plantation laborers by surprise in the wee hours of August 7. Living within a settlement consisting of four estate lanes at Pettimudi located 15 km from the tourist town of Munnar, they were buried under slush and boulders that rained down on their humble abodes that crumpled like cardboard boxes. Many were injured. The landslide claimed at least 49 lives.
Another heartrending tragedy hit Kerala on the same evening. An Air India Express flight from Dubai overshot the tabletop runway of Calicut International Airport at Karipur in Malappuram district. The flight carrying 190 passengers and crew plunged down a cliff before breaking into two and killed 18, including the pilot and co-pilot. Although many were injured, casualty remained low as the plane fortunately didn’t go up in flames.
Kerala and her citizens exhibited on that ‘black Friday’ rare resilience and all-enduring human spirit that defied selfishness and indifference.
After boulders, rainwater and soil buried human lives near Munnar, the local populace woken up from slumber by deafening sound waded through gushing rainwater and slush. They walked circumspectly through twisted metal and concrete rubble to alert for help. Power and internet connectivity had failed by then.
Those who survived looked for possible survivors in darkness, but in vain, as darkness and inclement weather played spoilsport. Later when help arrived at dawn, they lent hands to the police, fire force personnel and the National Disaster Response Force to retrieve the dead from the heap. They later helped bury the dead in the disaster site.
In distant Karipur, local citizens alerted by the cacophony of the crashing plane and distant wails for help defied heavy rain and fear of Covid 19 to rush to the crash site and organize one of the most effective accident-site evacuation Kerala has ever witnessed. They plunged head-on into the wreckage of the fractured airplane, with darkness and rain for company.
Irrespective of faith, color and nationality they transported the victims to various hospitals in their own vehicles. They did not bother about blood and dirt on the injured smudging the upholstery of their vehicles. They carried wailing children separated from parents trying to pacify them somehow.
They threw fear of Covid into the winds that accompanied the downpour. They organized transportation of the injured to hospitals in waiting ambulances. They united terrified children with panicky parents putting social media to good use. Once the last fellow being was pulled out of the wreckage, they lined up before blood banks to donate blood for the needy.
These two gory incidents placed the title of ‘God’s own Country’ firmly on Kerala. Ordinary people of Malapuram and Munnar chose to prioritize lives of those involved in the two accidents over their own. No politician was seen lending a helping hand when it mattered. They flocked together to play the blame-game they are most adept at much later.
Even Maneka Gandhi who courted communalism by alluding to people of Malappuram ‘terrorists’ when a wild elephant died after chewing on an explosive-laden fruit in faraway Palakkad wasn’t seen either. Neither did she choose to rectify the adjective used. Nobody expected her to do so. Isn’t she a politician after all!?