It was one of my first writings.          [ Document: pdf; 11319kB; page: 09 ]
"Seeing the floods of August 2018 in Kerala, it seemed somewhat prophetic" according to one of the readers.        
The Monsoons!
The annual event in the whole of South Asia and further along even briefly reaching up to the continent of Australia, have various contrasting forms and effects. it may be a curse, a tormentor, or in contrast, a gift, a boon or blessings from the mother nature, depending upon its behavior, severity, and duration. It is eagerly greeted by everyone to get some relief from the scorching heat, humidity, and drought. The farmers have been scouring the skies for some time for any trace of dark clouds. They want to pre-plan and prepare seeds and plants for the upcoming crop season. Good timing is vitally important. The monsoon rains are the harbinger of things to come for all the people in the subcontinent, largely the farmers. It foretells a good crop harvest or a disappointing one; existence or subsistence; debt relief or heavier debt burden; prosperity or poverty for the year. The monsoon is quite an unpunctual event raising anxiety among all. Indeed, it will eventually make its appearance either sooner, delayed or unexpected with its characteristic vagaries and tantrums. It leaves most of the time after crushing the people severely.  It lingers around for a few long months dictating life and everything surrounding it at the time and all the things to follow later on. It cannot leave without unleashing its fury causing much havoc, damage, destruction, neutralizing all the precautions the people had taken beforehand and the prayers they offered to gods. The Monsoon arrives with fury and forces in gigantic size & magnitude; thick dark clouds, deadening thunder & intense flashes of lightning, packing gale-force winds, saturated with large quantities of water content to shed most mercilessly at will upon the land.
Floods and devastation of a wide extent and gigantic proportions are inevitable.
The raging Monsoons of the year 2018 will be recorded in History for the various calamities caused, flood levels, panic, and destruction caused all across the south Indian state of Kerala and its long path. It caused many dams to release water, adding to the incessant and pouring rain; caused people to flee and evacuated; cut off electricity for the most part of the state; made repair work difficult and lengthy. It has already breached all previous metrics for such catastrophes. This stands in proportion to the biblical event "The deluge in Noah's time". Currently, it is raging unabated for over a month subjecting people to unbearable wrath, distress, anxiety, and grave life-threatening situations. Unlike other catastrophic incidents, the Monsoon rains have months-long stay and longevity. It makes several re-appearances in many different forms, characters, and assaults.
 
This particular story precedes the Monsoon of 2018. It was written a couple of years ago. It describes a single incident of a mudslide, following the breaching of a naturally formed earthen dam at the top of a  steep, inaccessible hill; gives an account of the panic created in a small community and the experiences of one of the families which have been living in the slopes of the valley consecutively for a few generations. They had to bear the full brunt of it.
The current Monsoon wrath caused numerous such events and so many more of additional ones with the floods, sending people progressively upwards, and ultimately stranding them in their narrow attics, threatening to crush their bodies against the ceiling and devoid of basic necessities. The plight of the old, sick, dying and pregnant mothers are worse, inexplicable and unimaginable. Relatives and the Kerala diaspora were continuously and deeply worried; enumerate their difficult experiences in contacting loved ones due to the damage of communication towers and the infrastructure network. The trapped people are being kept awake in vigil guarding crying children against continuously rising water, waves, amphibian reptiles, rodents, debris, and leaking roofs; patiently and desperately await the arrival of the humanitarian evacuation units and to make the risky rescue operations possible.
Some were alarmed and have been waiting quite long, clinging to their lives,... barely!