CUDDALORE:Four days after it was ravaged by the floods, Kalgunam village located near Kurinjipadi is yet to return to normalcy.
All houses in the village bore the brunt of the floods that followed after a breach in Sengal canal. In a flash, the gushing waters destroyed roads and knocked down electricity posts, leaving the village in darkness.
On Thursday, Sathya (20), a college student, was seen drying her soaked textbooks, notebooks and record notes under the sunlight in front of her house.
“Flood water entered our village on Monday and washed away most of our belongings. Many people lost their clothes, vessels; others their cattle,” she recalled. Pointing to her soggy notebooks, she said: “I have to write the record notes again. All my hardwork has gone in vain. It will take 10 days for me to write all the notes. My brother lost his notebooks.”
The story of an elderly couple Nammazhvar (75) and Rajalakshmi (65) was poignant, as they had parked themselves on the terrace of their house for a whole day since rainwater had entered their house. Rajalaskhmi said, “We could not come down from the terrace till Tuesday evening. We could not even cook food. Only on Tuesday night, we ate wheat dosa without chutney. Electricity posts had collapsed, disrupting power supply. We have been living without power for the past four days. We need to recharge our mobile to speak to our son, who works in Chennai, but have not been able to do so.”
The district administration has been supplying food packets to the people at the village three times a day. Roads damaged by the floods were being temporarily repaired by putting sandbags along the eroded areas. A medical team is camping at the village to monitor people’s health condition.
Sulochana, another villager, said, “Many women have not begun cooking food. It would take two or three days more to arrange everything in the houses as we lost our clothes. Also, mud stoves in our houses are wet and damaged.”
About 200 acres of agricultural lands, mostly paddy fields, were completely submerged in rainwater. Moreover, the flood brought with it huge amounts of silt and deposited it on their agricultural land. The silt has to be removed for cultivation.
“Farmers will have to go through tough times as they have to clear the silt and deposits either manually or using earthmovers. They have to spend more money for this work. This cost is over and above the loss suffered by them already as they lost their crops,” said Thiyagarajan, a villager.