Worry lines deepen over cyclone

VADODARA, Oct 31: Two days after the Super-Cyclone' struck the Orissa coast, worry-lines continue to crease the foreheads of hundreds of...

VADODARA, Oct 31: Two days after the Super-Cyclone8217; struck the Orissa coast, worry-lines continue to crease the foreheads of hundreds of Oriyas settled in Vadodara. Information about friends and relatives back home is hard to get; contact is almost impossible to establish.

8220;Can you help us get some information from Orissa? Our entire family is there8221;, asks Gyanda Mahapatra beseechingly. The wife of the city police commissioner finds her anxiety replicated in Nivedita Swain, spouse of Bharuch Collector B B Swain.

8220;Our parents and in-laws and all our relatives are scattered over the cyclone-hit areas, and there has been no news from them for the past three days8221;, they say. 8220;The phones don8217;t seem to be working.8221;

Unlike Surat, where the majority of the Oriya migrant population comprises the workforce of diamond units and the like, the 100-odd families who trace their roots to the disaster-struck State are well-established in various public and private sector organisations.

K C Jena, divisional railway manager of Western Railways, is one of them. 8220;I am very worried because no details are available about the situation in Cuttack, where I come from8221;, he says. 8220;But I am happy to learn from TV and newspapers that the strength of the cyclone has subsided.8221;

The three Oriya families living in the Gujarat Refinery colony have been truing frantically to get in touch with their countrymen in Vadodara and other parts of the country because they cannot contact their families and friends in Orissa.

8220;My mother was expected to return from Orissa on October 30, but she hasn8217;t arrived; nor is there any news from that end8221;, says a worried Amrit Misra, whose father A C Misra is a senior manager at Indian Oil Corporation.

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8220;I8217;m extremely tense8221;, confesses Satyaranjan Behera, senior accounts officer at Indian Oil Corporation. 8220;Our relatives all live in and around Bhubaneshwar and Paradip, the worst-hit region.8221;

Similar sentiments are expressed by Prabhasini Panigrahi, wife of S Panigrahi, reader at M S University8217;s Education Department, and S Patnaik, reader in Political Science. 8220;We8217;ve been scrounging for whatever information we can get8221;, they say. 8220;But we8217;re completely cut off from our near and dear ones in Orissa.8221;

The tension of not knowing the fate that has befallen their families and friends rides high among the dozen-odd Oriya students in the city. 8220;My hostel-mates have been doing all they can to find out exactly which areas have been badly hit8221;, says Prashata, who8217;s pursuing a Master8217;s course in Psychology at MSU.

But that is cold comfort at best for the people whose ordered lives have suddenly been threatened by a cyclone 1,800 km away.