It’s been a year, but 46-year-old Rejimon’s eyes well up every time he thinks about the night that changed his life forever. That Thursday (August 6, 2020), the father of two woke up to the sound one most powerful rainstorms he has ever seen.
Water gushed down the steep slope of a nearby hill located below the precipitous Rajamala hills in Pettimudi, a tea worker’s settlement where Rejimon lived in an estate lane house with his family. His youngest son Sanjay had gone to his mother Chandra’s house, located a few metres down his lane, to keep her company.
Rejimon stepped outside to find his neighbours frantically barricading their houses against the floodwaters. His own house seemed to have avoided the worst of the flow. So he ran across the hillside to check on his mother and son.
However, within seconds, their lane was swept away by the gushing waters and mud. After a three-day search, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and fire officials recovered the bodies of Chandra, Sanjay and Anjumol, Rejimon’s niece, who was staying with her grandmother there, from under the debris.
Anjumol, and their neighbour’s daughter Lakshanasree, 6, who shared a special bond were found hugging each other under a blanket.
“I still tear up when I think about it,” Rejimon told TNIE on Thursday. “God could have taken away my life and spared my children and mother,” he said amid sobs. According to Kanan Devan Hills Plantations, the tea company that owns land in Pettimudi, 81 people lived in the lane houses. Seventy people perished in the calamity. Sixty-six bodies were recovered before the search was officially called off a month later.
But Deepan Chakravarthy, 35, and his 55-year-old mother Palaniyamma are still searching for their relatives. They have to end their pursuit even after a year. Deepan is looking under the rubble for his sister-in-law Kasthuri and his six-year-old niece Priyadarshini, whose bodies were never recovered. Deepan lost six of his family members, including his father, brother, pregnant wife Muthulakshmi, two nieces and sister-in-law. “Muthulakshmi and Kasthuri were pregnant that time.
Had the landslide not happened, I would be busy cuddling my granddaughters. But fate robbed them all away leaving me alone,” Palaniyamma mourned. She did not know that Kasthuri was pregnant till a neighbour, told them about it after the tragedy. After one of his futile searches, Deepan left a garland of jasmine flowers and a packet of cake and sweets on the mud filled lane on July 31, to remember Priyadarshini on her birthday.
Tracking the disaster
Day of incident: August 6, 2020
Time: 10.45pm
No of people present in the settlement: 81
Lives lost: 70 (Children: 23, female: 37, male:33)
Bodies recovered: 66
Missing: 4 (Female:2, male: 2)
Rescued: 11
Compensation given (Rs 5 lakh): 46; (Pending: 20)