The rains had persisted for three days. It had made Mangaldas Sonu Virnak happy — the monsoons were the only source of water for his paddy field on top of the hill. But in the wee hours of July 30, 2014, the fourth day, he woke up worried. The downpour hadn’t stopped all night and he feared that his crop might be washed out. As morning came, despite protests from his wife and mother, the 33-year-old left for the fields, his father and brother in tow. “We were working in the field, when we heard a loud sound, like an explosion. In a matter of seconds, the lower part of the hill seemed to have shifted and a blanket of slush had replaced the village,” he says. Looking back, Virnak knows it was his decision to leave for the fields that saved the lives of the three men. But instead of gratitude, his voice is full of regret. On that fateful morning, the Virnaks lost 10 family members, including his wife, mother, sister-in-law and seven children of the household, in a landslide that wiped out nearly half the population of Malin, a village in the Ambegaon taluka of Pune district. The three men are currently living in a shelter for the survivors of the Malin tragedy, erected by the government a kilometre away from where the village stood earlier. The units are makeshift, made of tin sheets, the gap between the roof and the walls allowing the cold winter wind in gusts. Apologising about the state of the kitchen “in the absence of the women of the household”, he asks his neighbour, a distant relative, to “make some tea for the guests”. The men are still trying to come to terms with the loneliness that has become their constant companion. “We have received generous compensation from both state and central governments. But with our women and children gone, what will we do with it? We don’t even know what to do with ourselves, whom to talk to when we return from the fields. We just sit quietly and mourn our dead,” says Mangaldas. “Only if the landslide had taken place after 10 am, many lives would have been saved. The children would have left for school and men and women would have gone to the fields.” It’s a regret that echoes through the temporary settlement as those who died that day were mostly women, children and the elderly who had thought that their homes would keep them safe from the rains. It would be eight days before the rescue teams, led by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), would dig the last of the bodies out. *** The primary healthcare centre 2 km away from the site of disaster would become the epicentre of activity for days afterwards as healthcare and rescue facilities arrived in the area. Dhananjay Dixit, who handles the pharmacy at the clinic, refers to the landslide as the “most horrific experience” he has witnessed. “We provide primary health facilities. None of us were physically or mentally equipped to handle a tragedy of that scale. I still get nightmares sometimes,” he says. Like other surviving villagers, Dixit underwent psychiatric counselling that the government compulsorily provided, but the nightmares keep recurring. Kavita Jhanjhare doesn’t count herself among the “lucky ones”. The 27-year-old continues to look for the remains of her father who has been missing since the tragedy. “I lost 20 family members in the landslide. What pained me the most was having to look for their bodies in the aftermath,” she says. A Mumbai resident since her marriage, Kavita and her husband learnt about the landslide on TV and immediately left for her native village. By the time they reached, the NDRF had taken over, not allowing anyone close to the area of their operation. Only on the second day, after she “begged and pleaded” was she allowed inside. That’s when she spotted her brother’s body, the first of the 19 bodies she would have to identify. Lakshmi Doolaji Jhanjhare and her husband were more fortunate. Not only did they survive, but their house also escaped destruction. But now, they too find themselves in limbo as their house has become out of bounds since the government sealed the entire village. “We are left with no money and are surviving on the initial rations the government provided us with,” rues Jhanjhare who is on the lookout for a job. Like the Jhanjhares, many who survived the tragedy are bitter with the government’s decision of compensating only those who lost their loved ones. While such families have been given Rs 9 lakh per deceased, those who lost their houses have only been promised rehabilitation. When Sawadiram Pandurang Lambhe retired from his job at a telephone exchange in Mumbai four years ago, the 56-year-old moved back to his native village after 20 years. He invested all his savings in building a house for his son close to his own in Malin. Now, he is left with nothing. “All our cash and jewellery are either buried under the debris or taken away by those who were involved in the rescue operations,” says Lambhe. “We have no source of income as I lost my farmland in the tragedy. The government doesn’t give us any jobs, they get outsiders to build our shacks but won’t let us do it as a source of temporary income,” he says. Meanwhile, the rehabilitation site still remains to be finalised. Located on one of the hills along river Dimba, Malin is chiefly occupied by Adivasis who own paddy fields in the area. Since the probable cause of the landslide is said to be the rampant deforestation in the region, the government is being cautious. One of the theories is that a government scheme offering villagers higher returns to grow maize crop contributed to the disaster, since unlike paddy, which can be harvested on a slope, maize needs the land to be flattened. The villagers say the proposed site is too far from their farmlands and will require them to walk 3 km uphill to reach it. However, the area they prefer is much smaller than their total requirement and will lead to encroachment. As they await the government's decision, the men and women of Malin are slowly trying to get back on their feet. As she lights up wood for her choolha, Vithabai Sawadiram, 41, wonders if the rehabilitation will happen before the next monsoon. “That will keep us busy and help us start afresh. Right now, there’s too much uncertainty,” she says. Mangaldas too is keenly awaiting the government’s decision on the land. It will give him something else to think of, he says. Every morning, in order to go to his fields, he has to pass the spot where the house and the village once stood. “I see the ghosts of my children every day, playing outside the house,” he says, tears welling up in his eyes.
