Flash Flood

As many family and friends are already aware, there was a terrible flood that killed hundreds of people in Ladakh on August 6 in a matter of 30 minutes. The water that stormed through the region was only a segment of a larger phenomenon running through this part of the world: Pakistan is devastated with millions at risk for cholera. Delhi’s concrete buildings have been flooded. The Punjab region has farmers sitting on miniscule mounds of earth while brown water swirls around them for miles, and China has lost several thousands. My father-in-law, a remnant of the Old World as I call him, who is 75 years old, said this was the first time he had ever witnessed something of this magnitude, and many of us surmise that, year after year, as the earth’s weather patterns become more and more erratic, that global warming is truly showing up to give us some very difficult lessons. (Probably 10 days after the flood I happened to be watching “The Day the Earth Stood Still” on HBO and was grimacing that Hollywood had pretty much gotten a good metaphorical grasp on reality for once).

Here’s what I quickly scribbled down the day after the flood:

Last night there was a flash flood in Leh and throughout Ladakh. I have never experienced anything like it. The experience of a natural disaster is extraordinary, awesome. There was a storm on the horizon and above the Royal Palace when Abbass and I went out to dinner – lightning flashed occasionally. By the time it was 12:30am, the storms had come in with a thunderous roar. My gut was absolutely twisted in raw fear. Fear of such weight that my body was carrying it in my belly. The lightning was flashing several times every, single second. I had never seen lightning flash with such frequency, but the light would dance in front of one’s eyes. The thunder as a result was a constant roar – a drumming army - and the rain that came down was a torrential, splattering wash. When I peered out my window there was nothing to see – only the gray cascade of water which didn’t seem to rush down from the sky so much as just rush OUT from every which way, and specs of mud splattered across all the windows. The feeling was terrifying, suffocating, like a tunnel of souls being sucked away and down into an abyss. Anwar (Abbass’ brother) was running up the stairs in a panic, saying to everyone that we had to get out – apparently he had run down and made the mistake of opening the doors and let a rush of water over his body. Abbass ran out and had to get empty sandbags from the backside, fill them with sand from the Ladakhi toilet and then rush out and blockade the door. Already the courtyard was filled with two feet of rushing water – the outside was a rushing river almost four feet tall.

The first floor of the guesthouse is now caked in mud and gutted. Pieces of rooftop have fallen onto the tile floor. I am exhausted like I have been wrung out; others more exhausted for having stayed up all night hauling buckets of muddy water out of the courtyard. All the major infrastructure is out – the BSNL office that holds the servers are down. The phone lines are down, electricity is out, the hospital is apparently gone with only 4-5 rooms standing. My parents know more about what is happening around us than us; we are enclosed in an island of natural tragedy, can only go so far as a human can walk – and sometimes not for being blocked by a huge sweep of muddy water. Unofficial reports say that about 200 laborers and their families from Bihar were swept away in their respective neighborhood; the main market street is all but abandoned and caked with mud; all the shops are closed and locked. It is hot; the streets seem suffocated in the sunlight as the mud and water lay secured in potholes and pockets throughout. The main market, which has become a ghost-town with wires laced from streetlamp to streetlamp as the most prominent feature – has fallen to gray and dust as all the storefronts show off their corrugated metal fronts and faded paint jobs.

What is extraordinary is the guests who have stayed here and their generosity; two male visitors hauled water buckets with Abbass all last night, with water that had filled the courtyard and throwing it out into the street; a couple from France is cleaning out the courtyard of the piles of mud with a single plastic dustbin and dinner plates. We have had the sheer luck of being positioned in the wayward labyrinth of the Old Town so the waters didn’t collect and sweep us away; and that the foundation of the house, claimed by Abbass’ ancestors five generations ago, was cemented in stone. Some guests who fled during the night have returned: 3 Canadians and an American go out each day to volunteer in Choglomsar to help haul mud out of people’s homes. Aamir had slept through the entire experience. For some reason he always sleeps straight through the loudest and the strongest of storms, sounds, journeys. I do not know what he dreams of…

Here’s more in the days afterward:

The front of the guesthouse has 2 feet of mud piled in front of it. Abbass worked to set concrete blocks the day after in case another flash flood decided to come upon us in the days following. The mud has a really insidious nature; it dissolves immediately when water touches it, but when it dries it is hard as concrete. It is backbreaking to shovel. That is why people have used it for housing. In the dry, desert climate of Ladakh, all the most traditional homes are encased in the mud. They always smell of the fresh earth, are always cool in the hot summer afternoons. And those were the ones washed away with their families. I can imagine that many are fishing out the corpses from the hardest masses of earth.

Time is passing by so slowly. We have very little that is exciting to eat. There is no fresh bread or milk in the mornings anymore, so we go out quickly and buy the sliced white bread, which is really of poor quality, because it crumbles underneath your fingers. I obtain boxed milk for Aamir, but because we have no electricity, no refrigeration, the milk curdles into a solid, sour mass in a day. Time for a chai substitute. I am glad that only a day before I got cash from the ATM and a massive box of diapers for Aamir, but alarmed to find out from our Kashmiri shopkeeper tomatoes won’t come for another month, the basis for everything, as if that is a signal for something worse and more dire to come. I surmise this might be a good time to try again for some toilet training. For some more days it is rice, dahl and packaged noodles. The second day we fit about 7 guests into the winter kitchen and feed them rajma dahl since no restaurants have opened. The kitchen was filled with philosophy and laughter that night. We had a couple from Iceland, French, Canadians, an American. There are always a lively twining of lives here.
…
Abbass and I ventured to take a drive with Aamir to see what was going on, we wear masks over our faces; for the last two days it has felt like a fishbowl where we are enclosed in rotten mud, and I am dying to see what the rest of the world sees. When we drive down towards the airport past the opening gate of the city, we discover that an entire swatch of land has been washed away, positioned unluckily in the wake of a valley of two hills. The skeletal remains of the buildings make my eyes go wide. This is the first natural disaster of this scale I’ve ever experienced. Entire buildings are gone. There is just a wide plain of mud. Others have had their walls ripped off and their insides showing. Cars and whole trucks have been tossed up against their walls like toys, or casually ripped apart. Abbass’ old elementary school is nothing but a field of mud with a single skeletal remain of a white Suzuki sitting in the middle. The Indian Army golf field is now speckled with tents made from parachute silk with those that lost their homes.

Worse hit is the town of Choglamsar. After several days the Himalayan Road workcrews – who have the extraordinary job of keeping the roads cleared and maintained after each winter in the Himalaya, so they are damn good at what they do – have already cleared the path toward the neighboring village. We drive by to see buildings so deeply buried only the roofs are peeking out from the earth. Choglamsar was actually saved, in part, because there was a large Buddhist mani wall that ran the length of the road. This acted as a barrier, but still, another large swath of land was washed away in between it, and the crews had built a bridge over the area because a river was now in the place where buildings formerly stood. 8 feet of mud was caked over the main street, with rocks entrenched in the earth, each about the size of about half a car. Huge entanglements of tree roots are showing at different points of the road. You didn’t have a chance. The storefronts had their corrugated metal doors actually knocked in so the metal looks like it was punched by a giant fist – some even have cars thrown in. Crowds of people are milling about; labourers, foreigners, members of rescue teams, the Indian Army, all working together, one heavy dishful by dishful, to haul the mud out of the stores.

Lack of good food suddenly is becoming a fact, but by no means dire. Aamir is sorely disappointed that no ice cream has been delivered to town. I explain to him what a flood is, and that the trucks couldn’t deliver his good food. He understands. I have the sudden mommy insight that this is a great opportunity for me to cut down on his addiction to sugar. More chaos seems to be erupting in Kashmir – the region has had several deaths a day, and trucks have ceased to come in from that side as well, so gone are our stocks of papaya, pineapple, sweet apples and watermelon from that rich region. Stores in town are running on the empty side, but after only 3-4 days, the road from Manali is opened again and the shelves are flushed with the usual products. Except milk.

In the streets of day-to-day, there is no public display of sadness across everyone’s faces. Only a sober look, a downward turn of the eyes, the karmic acceptance of fate so natural to Indians. They have increased the flights out of Leh to take the labourers home to Bihar. They want to be reunited with their families. I am filled with first instinct to protect my child every daily hour, wondering if I could do more to help the others. There is no mistaking that. We are more than fine. Suddenly there is primary need to keep him well-fed, protected from the results of what happened, as he tries to “make roti” between his little hands from the piles of mud outside. He is all that I am right now. Abbass has hardly gotten sleep. One thing or another happens night after night – another heavy rain came in a week later and everyone ran up to the hills. Only Abbass stayed and strategically shoveled earth so the grated irrigation ducts wouldn’t fill up and create another flood outside the house. He has lost at least 10 kg.

We are now getting real statistics. Now 150+ people officially declared dead. The hundreds that are missing can only be presumed dead and encased in the piles of hard earth. One is a relative of the family, a distant cousin, only 35 years old, whose home is situated a stone’s throw from ours in the Old Town. As is tradition, a group of female mourners gathers together. Their cries and sobs can be heard, hour after hour, for about 3 days continuously, across the old jumbled roofs. The sobs continue into the evening, as the sky clears, then erupt again into the gray and light rain that passes through the Indus Valley. Their pain spills out, hour after hour, never seems to cease. It is a rupture among the sidewinding stone streets, gets absorbed by the evening light that cascades across the bulk of the palace, a wound that cannot be filled.