Magnamati

Magnamati

“That day, not a slice of live earth was available for the morning to place her sacred foot on. A stunned, awestruck morning was standing hapless on thousands of cadavers. Cyclones blow away roofs from the walls but this 1999 cyclone had blown away villages and settlements from the solid earth. All villages set up along the life-giving sea had vanished.

Even the slender plants of Dhobei and Jatadhari forests had surrendered to the deluge. Except the trunks of coconut trees, the other dismembered heaps of fallen trees were beyond identification. The bloated corpses on the sea had become strangers; the entire world was beyond recognition for the lone survivors here and there. After one and-a-half-days, the salty waves had retraced their guilt-ridden sleeps from the head bosom of the villages. After the flood water receded wherever one looked he saw only cadavers, the festering bodies of dead birds and isolated helpless barren buildings standing among the eye-piercing sight of uprooted and rotten trees. In this atmosphere of chaos and ruin were wailing a few ill-starred yet lucky human survivors who had lost their relatives, dwellings, cattle, golden harvest and one lifetime. Avayapur was totally wiped off by the terrible waves of the sea.”