A Cyclone’s Wretched Wake

As villagers along India’s eastern shore began recovering Wednesday from a powerful storm that pummeled the coast, one of the first necessary rituals was the burning of the dead.

Throughout the stretch of battered hamlets and flooded fields, the survivors of the storm bade farewell to friends and family. In this predominantly Hindu region, that meant lighting funeral pyres--even when circumstance made the ceremony crude.

“Hundreds of people have been burned on this spot,” said L. Kumar Rao, who wore a kerchief over his face as he watched over dozens of victims killed in last week’s cyclone. The swollen corpses lay in rows on the beach before him, and Rao paused to consider the friends he knew among them.

“These are our neighbors,” he said, his voice muffled by the kerchief. “We are the same people, but we are alive and they are dead.”

In a glimmer of hope, efforts to rescue more than a million stranded people seemed to gather momentum Wednesday, five days after one of the century’s most powerful cyclones crashed in from the Bay of Bengal.

Roads blocked by flood waters and debris began to open, and convoys of trucks sped through in large numbers. Villagers cut off for days from communications and relief showed signs of stirring from their shock. Military planes dropped more than 100 tons of food, amphibious craft brought supplies directly onto beaches, and President Clinton pledged $2.1 million in food aid.

“The relief is on a war footing,” said Jugal Kishore, revenue secretary for the state of Orissa, which bore the brunt of the cyclone.

With the opening of roads, the ravages of the storm were revealed, in all their wretched detail, for the first time.

In scores of hamlets along the coast were scenes of complete devastation: of flattened homes, of dogs gnawing at corpses, of rice paddies littered with bloated livestock. Some villagers camped on the roadside and fought one another for the highest ground, while others, still dazed from their ordeal, wandered barefoot or half-naked through their ruined homes.

Even as the first signs of recovery emerged, the specter of major difficulties loomed. Local hospitals reported hundreds of new cases of gastrointestinal diseases--the result, doctors said, of people drinking water contaminated by decomposing flesh. The doctors said they feared the outbreak of such diseases as cholera and malaria.

In front of the Port Trust Hospital in the hard-hit port city of Paradwip, Susma Das was riding across town on the back of a rickshaw with her father-in-law, Hari Prudan, sprawled next to her. The elderly Prudan lay near death from dysentery.

“The water is poison,” Das said.

Estimates of the number of people killed in the cyclone still varied widely Wednesday, with most settling around 5,000. Air force planes conducted aerial surveys to spot bodies, many of which could be seen floating in still-submerged fields.

A total of 15 million people are believed to have been affected by the storm, with 2 million homeless. About 1,500 villages were destroyed.

One of those was Sandhakud, a fishing village of about 15,000 people fronting the Bay of Bengal. The villagers felt the full force of the cyclone’s 120-mph winds, and for three days the place was under water.

With the tides having receded, hundreds of villagers were missing. The people of Sandhakud said they hoped that some would return, but most said the missing were dead. Villagers couldn’t agree on how many: maybe 200, maybe 1,000, maybe more.

“I thought the cyclone was going to kill us all,” said Sumitra Bai, a 30-year-old mother of three. “I, for one, did not expect to live.”

Bai told a tale similar to dozens heard in villages along Orissa’s coast. When the cyclone roared into the village, she and her husband, Kedar, decided first to save the children. One at a time, Kedar took the kids across the rising waters to a nearby cottage on higher ground. After Kedar took their 2-year-old daughter to safety, he did not return--and Bai stood alone. With the water rising to her chest, Bai set off on her own, swimming and lunging 1,000 yards through torrents and winds to reach her husband and children.

On Wednesday, she and her family were back for the first time, picking through the ruins of their demolished home.

“The clothes I have on are all I own,” Bai said.

Others were worse off. When the cyclone swept into the village of Tentulipuda, the thatched-roof home of Saroj Senapati and his family collapsed. Together, they leaped into the rushing water and swam for a safer house. The currents swept away Senapati’s father and two sisters. He found their bodies the next day.

On Wednesday, after cremating the three, Senapati rode his bike through the flooded streets to look for a job.

Across the region, many villages have collapsed into a mixture of chaos and purpose. In Biswal, a hamlet submerged for three days after the storm, many of the villagers had left their homes to camp on the highway--the only elevated ground around.

The stink of death pierced the air, and two bodies lay unattended in a rice paddy nearby. Dead cows were scattered throughout the village walkways. Some people occupied themselves by trying to boil water to drink. Others were already sick.

“We live near the sea and we are used to storms, but we never had anything like this,” said Kailash Swain, a rice farmer. “The storm washed away so many bodies that we don’t know how many are missing.”

There were many signs Wednesday that the people of the coastal villages are planning to leave and start new lives somewhere else.

In Paradwip, throngs struggled to squeeze onto buses leaving town. Among them were Arundanda Das and his family. On Wednesday, Das, his wife and two children had waited for two days to go to the village where he was born. Das said he wasn’t sure how long he would stay or if he would return to Paradwip at all.

“After this, I want to see my family,” he said.

The bus, with 40 people sitting on the roof alone, was too crowded and left Das and his family standing on the curb.

Officials promised that things would get better soon. S. K. Mohapatra, in charge of the port of Paradwip, said it was largely functioning. D. N. Padhi, the state’s chief relief official, predicted that new airdrops would soon be delivering supplies to nearly 70% of the stranded villages--up from 30% earlier this week.

Across the region Wednesday, many people said it was still too early to make decisions about the future. Bhagya Dhar, for instance, waded with all his belongings across a dirty stream, his family in tow. He said he didn’t want to leave but didn’t have much choice: He has no money and no home--just a fishing net and a couple of glass bottles stuffed in a bag.

Dhar, 40, said he planned to take his eight family members to a local shelter until things became more clear.

“My father lived in this village, and my grandfather before him,” Dhar said. “Everything vanished in the sea.”