Cyclone Vardah, that made landfall in Chennai, reminded me of the widespread damage unleashed by a terrible typhoon on our innocent village exactly four decades ago. The evening this calamity struck, all my family members except my mother had gone to the nearby farmhouse. All of a sudden, the sky was overcast and it became dark with the cyclone’s heavy howling. Never in my life had I seen such a furious wind uprooting everything in its trail. It was at the fag end of the autumn season. The cyclone struck around 6.00 pm when I was doing my homework.
I was studying in the six standard then. Gripped by the fear of nature gone wild and mad in its fury, I yelled at my mother to come out of the kitchen. Compounding my fear, a crown of a tall coconut tree standing afar was cut off and blown away by the cyclone. Many trees began to get uprooted. There was a tall coconut tree by the side of our big house with a lot of bunches of ripe and tender coconuts that fell on to our courtyard. The coconuts lay strewn all over. We were greatly petrified with fear. Even some tiles of our house were taken out by the mighty cyclone that kept blowing with gusto. We then heard great cries of help from our neighbourhood. But we could not move out as torrential rain accompanied the cruel and gruelling wind. When the rain subsided, my mother rushed to the neighbour’s house taking me with her. As our fence had already been flattened by the hurricane, we were able to reach the neighbour’s house just by walking over the flattened barrier.
There were other neighbours too already gathered there. Then I looked at the house. A tall coconut tree had fallen on it damaging the entire house. Luckily, nothing happened to the four members living inside. All were safe as they ran out of their homes just before it crashed. The next morning saw neighbours being assembled. People wholeheartedly began to engage in tidying up the whole village which was rendered useless by the cruel rogue cyclone. The cyclone’s catastrophic effects on the village made people forget everything. United they stood for the common cause of the village and within one week, the lost glory of the village was restored partly. It proved one thing beyond doubt— it was the will of the people that mattered most. If people stand united, nothing can prevent them from achieving the desired result. The best lesson is “Unity is Strength”.
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