MEPPADI
We set out for Wayanad, a picturesque district in Kerala high on the Western Ghats, around evening from Kozhikode. As we traverse the nine hairpin bends up the winding road to Wayanad, the air grows cooler. The steep and verdant slopes are blanketed in mist. As dusk gathers, one can see pinpricks of light from Kozhikode. On a clear day, one can even identify the runway of the airport.
In fact, this road―known as the Thamarassery churam―is the main passage connecting Wayanad and the rest of Kerala. The people in the district depend on it even to transport emergency medical cases to Kozhikode, with Wayanad lacking advanced facilities. The 14km stretch is so narrow that traffic snarls can sometimes clog it for up to six hours.
At night, we reach Vythiri, one of the three sub-districts of Wayanad (along with Mananthavady and Sulthan Bathery). Passing a jumble of adventure parks which have just come up recently and rundown homestays with names like ‘Heaven Villa’ and ‘Paradise Retreat’, we reach our hotel. Early the next morning, we go to ‘After July 30’―the bakery-restaurant in the town of Meppadi owned by Kalathingal Noufal, who lost 11 members of his family, including his wife, three children and parents, in the devastating landslide in Wayanad on that date last year.
At first glance, ‘After July 30’ looks like any other bakery in Kerala―shelves stacked with biscuits and chips; glass cases showcasing carrot and plum cakes; tall tins of sweets and chocolates; a fridge with tubs of ice-cream in varied flavours like avocado, chikku and coconut. In a corner of the airy, well-lit space is the kitchen and right in front, a tea stall where someone brews fresh coffee and tea.
At first glance, Noufal, too, is as nondescript as his restaurant. Clad simply in blue shirt, jeans and sneakers, it is almost like he wishes to merge into the backdrop. He speaks in a low voice, but when he smiles, a pair of dimples come alive. Their appearance dims, though, as he narrates the story of what happened that fateful day.
After his marriage, Noufal struggled financially. His work in construction, with some farming on the side, was not enough to make ends meet. Eight years ago, he left for Oman to join his nephew in the catering business. There, he flourished, sent home most of his earnings and settled his debt. He did think of bringing his family to Oman, but decided against it, because life there was hard and the work unpredictable. “If you don’t get an order, you have no work. But you could get an order at midnight and would have to work then,” he says. “Seven of us from Wayanad, [and the districts of] Malappuram and Kasaragod stayed together in a house. Life was hard, but I enjoyed it.”
Eight months before the landslide, he had come home for a two-month stay, but had to extend his time here, because his father got a stroke three days after he reached. “I gave him the best care and made sure he could walk again,” he says. “I did everything for him that I could.” His daughter had just passed her SSLC exams with excellent marks. He enrolled her at the SKMJ higher secondary school in the district headquarters of Kalpetta―one of the best schools in the region―before he went back to Oman four months before the landslide.
On that day, he had been speaking with his family till 12:30am. They said that the rain had decreased and they were going to bed. Within 15 minutes of the landslide, which took place an hour later, a relative called to inform that his village of Mundakkai had been washed away. Immediately, he called his family, but their phones were not ringing. He kept calling them by turns in vain.
“The area where we live in Mundakkai is considered to be very safe,” he says. “People who stayed near the river used to come and seek refuge in the premises of the mosque near our home whenever it rained heavily. Not even in my wildest dream did I think that the house would get washed away. In fact, when it started raining heavily, I told my elder brother and his family to come to our home, since theirs was below ours. In the end, their home got only partially damaged. They might have been able to run to safety if they had stayed there.”
He started becoming scared when someone told him that the mosque, a few metres above their home, had collapsed. On the flight home, he was torn between hope and fear. On the one hand, he had been told that many people in Mundakkai had sought refuge in a nearby resort and he hoped this included his family. On the other, he suspected that since his family had been speaking with him till just before the landslide, they would not have made it to the resort.
When he reached the Kozhikode airport, people were waiting to escort him to Wayanad in a car. Then he knew that something was terribly wrong. Initially, they told him that only his parents had died and the others had been rescued. It is only when he reached Wayanad that he realised the magnitude of his loss. “They found the bodies of my daughter and my elder brother’s daughter on the day that I arrived,” he says. “I only got to see their bodies (his parents were buried before his arrival). The rest of my family was identified through DNA samples. I went back twice to confirm it was my daughter. I did not know what to do. I just sat there the whole night.”
According to Noufal, he is where he is today only because of his friends who brought him back to life. “People who I expected to help never came through,” he says. “It is people who I barely knew who came to my aid and became close friends. They left their families and stayed with me for days on end, taking care of my needs. I am eternally indebted to them.”
Initially, he stayed in a rented space in Meppadi called Apple Tower rooms for more than a month, along with 35 other survivors. “We never discussed our loss,” he says. “We would only talk about old memories and share lighter stories. That’s how we began finding the strength to recover.” His first plan was to return to Oman, but before that, he had to get all the documents which he had lost; he only had his passport with him. It was as he was preparing to leave that a friend’s father suggested he start a business here. When an organisation―Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen―offered to support him financially, he started seriously considering the possibility.
“If I left this place, that would mean that there is no one to keep alive the memory of my family. Besides, what was the point in going back? I had gone there and worked hard only for my family. If that had been in vain, what was the point in going back now? Who would I be struggling for? In one night, I had lost everything, all that I had been working for. So why should I go back?”
It is not for himself that he opened the restaurant; it is for his wife Sajna, whose dream this was. “I was in catering,” he says. “I know the difficulties involved in running a restaurant. I did not want to do it. But I wanted to fulfil her dream. She used to bake good cakes. She urged me to start the restaurant so that we could all be together; she would do the baking, she said.”
Even today, it is not easy. He stays in a room below ‘After July 30’. He is in the restaurant at 6am and works there the whole day. By the time he wraps up, it is usually 2am. But he likes to keep himself busy, to keep the memories at bay.
So why name the restaurant after the disaster which took his family? “I want to keep the memory of that day alive,” he says. “Two years later, no one will remember the date. I want everyone to come here and be reminded of what happened. Even small children should ask and be told the story of the landslide.”
Today, it is only his faith that keeps him going. “Otherwise, I would have gone insane,” he says. “My firm belief is that my family is happy and is watching me from heaven. They are in a better place.” The only time Noufal breaks down is when he recollects the happy times he would have with his wife and children when he returned from Oman. “My children were my everything,” he says. “I would fulfil even their smallest desires. They obeyed and respected me, but they would also have all sorts of fun and I would support them. I was more their friend than their father.”
***
On our way out, we talk with Noufal’s friend, K.U. Shafeeq, who works as the cashier at the restaurant. He, too, had lost his home in Mundakkai during the landslide, although he and his family were elsewhere then. In fact, everyone working in the restaurant are survivors of the disaster.
“We are childhood friends,” says Shafeeq. “I had another shop in the airport. Noufal would often come there on his way to Oman. He always used to say that we would start something together one day. When this tragedy happened, we urged him to open the restaurant as a way to overcome his grief. After the disaster we all stayed together in Apple Tower rooms. Being together helped us to help him, because we were with him all the time. We never allowed him to go anywhere alone. One of us would always accompany him. Now he is much better. It is only now that we are also relaxed. Earlier, we used to be afraid for him. Noufal was always a quiet person whose priority was his family.”
At the entrance of the restaurant is a large painting of the village of Mundakkai as it used to be, full of lush trees and tiled houses. ‘The Mundakkai of our memory’, goes the caption. “Do you see that roof over there? My home was just behind it,” Noufal tells us. However, he declines to go there with us. “I won’t be able to stand it,” he says, explaining how painful it was to visit the site once after he lost his family. He has never gone back since.
So we set off on our own, along with Sujatha Mahadhevan, a Mahila Congress leader from Meppadi who volunteered at a relief camp for two months after the landslide. As we pass tea and coffee plantations on the 15-minute drive to Mundakkai, Sujatha tells us that no rehabilitation work has yet begun in the wiped-out villages of Mundakkai and Chooralmala. The people there are either living with relatives or in rented houses nearby. “Once the road to these villages is repaired, many homestays may come up, but no one will go to live there again,” she says.
Sujatha recounts how on the day of the landslide, one could see from afar people getting washed away. “All you could do was watch helplessly,” she says. “If they were lucky, they would find a branch to hold on to. Sometimes all you could retrieve of those who died were a toe or a finger. We would take DNA samples of these to be later matched with family members.”
To enter Mundakkai, outsiders must get a pass. The media is allowed inside until 3pm. A 190-foot Bailey bridge―erected by the Indian Army after the landslide to transport machinery and ambulances―leads to the village, now reduced to rubble. The barren land is pervaded by a dark silence. Half-destroyed homes are now deserted structures, without life and laughter. We see remains of the mosque near Noufal’s home, but no trace of the home itself. Atop a small hill, near the mud-splattered wall of a destroyed house, are strewn some household items―a tin bucket, plates, a pillow, a pot―remnants of some family’s everyday life.
Sujatha points out a heavy concrete slab near the house on the hill. She describes how a man had got trapped under the slab. The more his brother tried to lift it, the more unbearable was the pain, until the man begged him to stop. Even as onlookers watched helplessly, the man died a slow and painful death.
***
The landslide hit the villages of Mundakkai, Chooralmala and Punchirimattam in the early hours of July 30, perhaps the worst disaster to strike a place in Kerala. When the bridge connecting Chooralmala to Mundakkai and Attamala collapsed, rescue personnel found it impossible to reach the families trapped there. More than 254 lives were lost, with 44 people still missing. Over 1,500 homes were damaged or destroyed.
Although there were allegations that deforestation and improper land use caused the landslide, Wayanad district collector and District Disaster Management Authority Chairperson Meghashree D.R. denies this. “I have interacted with a lot of experts on this,” she says. “This is definitely not a manmade disaster. In those surroundings, we do not see much of human habitation. [People lead] a very simple lifestyle. There are no high-rise buildings or active quarrying within 5km of that region. There has also been no major tree-felling.”
Talking about plans for rehabilitation, she says, “We did a survey of more than 20 land parcels that could accommodate over 1,000 families. An expert committee analysed their disaster susceptibility and [whether they met the] requirements for a township. These were suggested to the Kerala government, which finalised two locations in Elstone and Nedumbala [estates]. We have also started other activities related to the permanent township. In a month, we will be able to report good progress.”
***
As the sun begins to set, we head to the house of Noufal’s sister E.T. Nousheeba. Her home in Mundakkai, too, had got washed away in the landslide when she, her husband, and three children had a narrow escape. Now, she lives in a rented house near Meppadi. The road here is steep and narrow, so we park the car some way off and walk to the house. Her son Thafseel greets and leads us inside. Over black tea and chips, Nousheeba tells us her story.
“All four of us―my sister, myself, and two brothers―grew up in penury,” she says. “Our parents worked in the tea estates, but did not earn much. Till the fourth standard, we walked 4km one way to reach our school in Attamala. Noufal was the naughtiest and smartest of us all. He was always getting into one scrape or the other. I remember our mother used to come home late from work, after we had all gone to bed. She would wake us up to serve dinner. We would all be fed from one single plate. Only Noufal would not get up and leave when the food got over, because he was still hungry. He would sit there for a long time, hoping to get something more.”
She says that all four siblings and their children are very close. In fact, on the day of the landslide, Noufal’s 13-year-old son Nihal kept insisting that Nousheeba and her family, too, go and stay with them in the ancestral home, where Noufal’s parents, wife, children, and his brother Mansoor and family were put up. Whatever happens, we will face it together, Nihal told his aunt. However, Nousheeba’s husband decided they would not shift. Her son Thafseel remembers visiting the ancestral home earlier that day to collect a jackfruit that Noufal’s parents wanted to send across to Nousheeba. The first sight that met him was of the daughters of Noufal and Mansoor on their knees, earnestly praying. “What are you praying for?” he asked them. “That there won’t be any landslide,” they replied.
Their prayers proved to be in vain when later that night Nousheeba heard a deafening noise. The earth shook and all the glass items in the house shattered. There was an unbearable stench. All of them got up and ran. Everyone in their area sought refuge in a neighbour’s home. Nousheeba kept calling everyone in the ancestral home, but to no avail. They tried to get to town, but the road was blocked. The men took a side road to the ancestral home, but were stunned to discover that the land had been completely flattened and no house stood there anymore. They did not tell Nousheeba, though. All that time, Noufal was constantly calling her. “I didn’t know what to tell him,” she says. “I just told him that they were all safe. But in the end, towards dawn, he cried out to me: ‘It’s all over, isn’t it?’”
The sight that awaited her in the morning was shocking. When she looked down from the hill, there was nothing below. In the ensuing chaos, Nousheeba remembers sitting soaked in the rain, trembling. They were burying bodies all around her. When she saw the body of her mother, she could not hold it together anymore. She broke down.
Noufal came home the next day. He was in a bad state. Nousheeba told herself to stay strong for him. It was heartbreaking to watch him sifting through the bodies searching for his family. “All of us were so close,” says Nousheeba. “Noufal’s daughter Nafla and my daughter were the same age and studied sitting on one bench in every class, until recently when Nafla got admission to the SKMJ higher secondary school, while my daughter did not. Nafla was very bright and got A+ in every subject.”
But what is most touching is a note that Noufal’s son Nihal gave him when he went to Oman last, a screenshot of which Nousheeba shows us. Nihal told him not to open it until he told him to. Noufal forgot about the note in his bag and opened it only on his way home to Wayanad after the landslide. “I love you, uppa,” Nihal had written in curly, colourful lettering. “You are my life.”
By the time we leave, it is dark. Twigs and leaves crunch beneath our feet as we make our way back to the car, the path lit by the light from our phone torches. In a small way, it made me wonder whether Nihal’s note had served as a torch to Noufal―a source of comfort leading him back to life and hope.