Open Writing

On October 16th 1942 West Bengal suffered one of its most devastating cyclones. I, as a thirteen-year-old boy, found the unforgettable experience both terrifying and exciting.

The first I knew about its potential danger was when Mr. Laurie, the school’s headmaster, had been warned that the ominous low green and black cloud overhead that measured fourteen miles in length foretold of an extremely destructive cyclone. He immediately closed the school and sent the staff and pupils home.

My body was almost parallel to the road as I pushed my bicycle the whole four miles home along Second Avenue battling the gale force winds and stinging rain. As I fought my way, I occasionally laughed out aloud at the sight of Indian baboos (office clerks) briefly struggling with their umbrellas before the wind snatched them away sending them aloft like huge black dandelion clocks.

I had to take off my rubber waterproof cape, as it was acting like a sail making me feel that I too was in danger of joining those flying umbrellas. My body was soaked through with perspiration because of the heat and humidity as soon as I had left the schoolyard anyway.

I was exhausted when I eventually arrived at our doorstep. Moving inside I saw to my amazement that a dozen or so servants and their families were in the house as well. My parents had insisted that they leave the servants less secure quarters and move into our house with its double-bricked walls for safety.

Once everyone was safely inside, the windows and doors were locked and bolted. The galvanized iron bathtub had been filled with water for general use while both our large chatties (earthenware pots) were filled with boiled water for drinking. Hurricane lamps and candles were also brought out should they be needed.

The furniture in the dining and living rooms was cleared aside to make room for the servants sleeping mats.

I cannot remember how my sister Gloria came home that day; she must have done so, as I am sure I that she was with us the next morning.

After ensuring that the house was secure, Mum, Dad, Gloria and I ate a cold meal before moving into our bedrooms to give the servants their privacy.

Despite the noise of the howling wind, the torrential rain and the crashes and creaks from the railway workshops nearby, worn out by my efforts getting home, I soon fell asleep.

When I awoke just after dawn the following morning, all was hushed. There was no birdsong, no sounds of vehicles, no voices and no wind. It was a most eerie sensation.

We all cautiously ventured outside where we saw a beautiful clear calm newly washed day. Looking out of our front door towards the dairy farm in a nearby valley we saw little sign of any obvious damage. It was only when we moved around to the back of the house that we could see the destruction the storm had caused on the vast railway workshops nearby. It looked as if a giant had come along and literally trampled the buildings. Concrete foundation's 6 feet by 6 feet by 6 feet that acted as anchors for the solid steel girders holding up the galvanized iron roofs of the loco sheds were pulled out of the ground like weeds from a garden. Passenger and freight cars were tangled up in the wrecked structures. Dad immediately walked over and took some photographs with his Agfa bellows camera.

With ours being a new suburb, not many trees had yet been planted along the roadside. However, when we crossed over the railway cutting into the main part of Kharagpur we saw that most of the beautiful large shady trees growing along the avenues lay uprooted and thrown across the road. These distressing images were repeated throughout the whole of the town. I was too young to realize the consequences of such destruction and enjoyed myself clambering over the large trunks and branches rejoicing at not having to go to school that day. For years my family had a couple of teak bowls as souvenirs turned from sections of the trunks of those once beautiful trees.

As the day progressed we heard some horror stories. In one case a woman's body in a nearby village was found caught up in telegraph wires high in the air. Apparently she had tried to save her two children who had been snatched out of her arms and also blown away.

The Scottish Black Watch regiment based at the Bay of Bengal seaside town of Digaghat about ten miles away were forced to drive their vehicles to the top of the highest knoll they could find at the height of the storm to escape a tidal wave that they had anticipated. To demonstrate what these unfortunate young men must have experienced, another cyclone that occurred on the 21st September 1985 in the same area reported that "Storm waves 15' high rushed twelve miles inland". The sea level had slowly risen up to the soldiers'; necks as they stood on the back platform of their Lorries. There it remained for hours before finally receding. These men were so traumatized by this experience that when they were finally brought to Kharagpur they became quite drunk and behaved so badly, at our Railway Institute that they were disbarred for a period from entering the club’s premises.

Later we were all absolutely stunned to read in the ‘Statesman’ newspaper that the terrible cyclone had killed and injured about 40,000 people.

When my family and I left India about four years later my boyhood memory of the storm could only deal with the loss of those wonderful old trees that had once given the towns residents such welcome shade as they walked and rode their bicycles along those beautiful tree-lined avenues. The human cost however, proved too overwhelming for me to comprehend.

The following year 1943, West Bengal suffered an appalling famine caused by restrictions on the movement of food and of its marketing. The British government had banned the use of county boats in Bengal, to prevent the advance of the Japanese. This played a vital part in the local movement of foodstuffs. Their impounding disrupted supplies. The failure of the monsoons encouraged traders to hoard stocks, which meant that the poor were unable to afford food grains. As a consequence about two million people starved to death.

At fourteen years of age, I could not understand why there were starving people at the side of the road in town and in the market. Food was rationed but the only real shortage, as far as I knew, was rice. There seemed to be more than enough wheat, potatoes and other basic foodstuffs. In my juvenile mind I put it down to the people being hidebound by tradition and not being resourceful. Ah, the certainty of youth.

When the goods trains passed through the cutting at the end of our street I saw many Indian people using flat pieces of metal shaped like tyre-levers scraping under the doors of goods carriages while the train waited for the signal lights to change. By doing so, they were able to loosen the tightly packed grains of rice inside the wagon. They would then use baskets or pots or anything they could find to collect the grain as it trickled out. When the train moved on they ran alongside for as long as they were able. Then they would turn and work their way back collecting what had fallen once again I could not understand the mentality of these people. Here they were starving and yet they were prepared to waste such a valuable resource for a few grains. Thinking back now I realize that when one is hungry one will do anything to survive.

These loose grains of rice lying alongside the tracks caused a very different problem at that time.

A water buffalo had been hit and killed by a train as it wandered along the tracks near this same railway cutting one night. It must have been foraging for these grains. When the day broke the vultures, which were forever circling the sky looking for carrion, came down to feast on the carcass and in turn they too were struck by more than one passing train. Seeing these unfortunate birds minus wings and legs flapping around our neighbourhood was a pitiful and horrible sight. Dad and a couple of other men dispatched many of these unfortunate creatures with their shotguns before arranging for the area to completely cleared of all putrid bodies to try and prevent a similar occurrence.

© Clement 2006