It wasn’t the summer sun, thankfully. We worked hard. Standing in a chain, passing vessels filled with sand. Switching places when those who were digging were exhausted. Information Technology professionals who have never seen so much manual labour all their lives. A few of the villagers joined in to help us help them.
Nine houses we managed to restore to vaguely livable conditions. Only the tiniest iota of the work that needs to be done. Other teams that were with us helped out at shelters, children’s camps and the general hospital.
I cannot even begin to imagine what the survivors feel. I don’t even try. In the villages we visited, most seem to have come to terms with the facts. Children play a game of ‘vegetable shop’, a little girl sells neem leaves for two rupees fifty paisa, from behind the remains of a wall, to her friends; the men discus their problems with us; the women offer us bananas as a thanks for our little effort. Yet a sense of emptiness and shock hovers.
It will be years before a suggestion of normalcy is returned to these villages.
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