Fani-A Catastrophic Cyclone

Never had I imagined that my summer vacation will witness such an agonizing destruction of Odisha. A whirlwind turned my vibrant Odisha into a post battle scene. Howling animals and the tornado gushing through the trees made the moment terrible enough to send fear punching through my guts.

Let me give you a flashback.

3rd May, 2019- Fani, the extremely severe cyclone made its landfall at Puri. A cyclone is not something new to the residents here because we have seen a plethora of them but this was the rarest of the rare. It had started pouring from the previous day. The waiting silence indicated the arrival of a horrible nightmare. The government workers had put their back in the pre-cyclone work. About 8,00,000 people were evacuated and the government had aimed for zero casualties. But there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. It came and took away everything with it. The animals and the people especially in the coastal areas did not have a dog's chance to fight the cyclone. Winds blew at a speed more than 200 kmph and swept away everything that came in its way. It left us with 34 fatalities and a loss of nearly ₹12000 crore.

The devastation caused by Fani is irreparable. We had travelled back in time when there was no electricity, no mobile networks, no water supply, nothing. When I stepped out of my house (which by God's grace was still standing strong) I was literally shaking in my shoes. What was even worse was we had no ways of knowing about the state of our dear ones in other parts of Odisha. Wherever my eyes went, it all seemed like the path to hell.

Government was on its toes to start the post cyclone work. All the workers sweated day and night to bring back everything to normal. Puri town had to stay 20 days without electricity and till now many parts of Puri are without power supply. People had to and are still suffering for that four hours destruction. Government donated money and distributed reliefs to the cyclone affected people. Thanks to the government because of whose precautionary measures Odisha was saved from a worse mishappening.

I would like to talk about a whole new perspective of Fani. In the course of development we have destroyed nature till the cows came home. Now in return nature conspired to destroy us. We used to cut trees recklessly for our own good and now we are crying rivers but we are not left with more than a dozen of trees. In a way we are suffering for our own mistakes. We teens couldn't stay without our phones for a minute but the same teens had to live without the phones for weeks. Fani has taught us the lesson of the decade that is if we don't start caring for nature, nature is ever mighty over humans and it will not hesitate to prove so from time to time.