Dear friends,
I am back in Cal, arrived at the Howrah station at 12:55 AM via Coromandel Express.
This was the first train that they
have allowed over the till now closed Bhubanswar - Cuttuck route..... and it was a
sheer hell of an experience.... such
scenes of death and destruction I have rarely heard about leave alone seen. Even 10
days after the cyclone wrecked its
havoc, one can see carcasses of cattle laying in the open miles after miles, with
horrible stench emanating from them.
At one place where the train stopped there invaded a peculiarly obnoxious smoke....a
little investigation revealed a
mass cremetion being in process for the already rotting dead bodies.
For much of Orissa we had to come by the single track the railways have been able to
repair as yet. With the
communication not yet up between all the stations, we had to wait at some of the
stations for hours. Often the engine
was uncoupled from the rest of the bogies, and the driver took it to the next point
till where the communication had
been restored. He would thus make it sure that the tracks were safe to travel over,
come back and haul us over. The
sight of huge concrete slabs that had been twisted out of shape like thin sheets of
ply seem too fantastic to be
real...but it was! The stations that had come under the path of the cyclone looked
like sheets of paper passed through
a shredder with not so sharp blades. On our way on the train we get to hear that
yesterday people travelling on the
Falaknuma Express (Howrah --> Secundrabad/Hyderabad) were robbed even of the clothes
they had on by the desparate
villagers, so whenever the train would stop at any dark junction within the affected
area many of us got very
apprehensive of what may happen to us as well... On the whole it was _SOME_
experience.
But its good to be back. I see two new members have joined the list. Incidentally one
of them have the email id from
Calcutta's newest ISP --> caltiger.com... come on you guys... who are you folks, why
don't you introduce yourselves???
Cheers,
--Indra
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