Text and Pics Tara Narayan & Bindiya Vaval Naik
IT was an unforgettable Sunday! May 15-16 was a weekend to remember in Goa for although it had started to rain off and on Sunday came the main menu of stormy weather to hold many spellbound. The warnings had been going out from the Meterological people but until one saw heard the thunder claps and vivid lightening savagely splitting the skies…few believed it could be this bad!
It was on Sunday morning that Ponjekars woke up to the real force of the Cyclone Tauktae as it shook through town PanajiI with cyclonic high velocity winds and stormy gusts of rain for over 24 hours, even the bravest dared not step outdoors. This was not only because there was a government declared curfew on because of the escalating cases of Corvid-19 and mounting death toll of 50-60-70 plus, plus daily – but because of the macabre weather, one of the worst witnessed in Goa.
That rain-filled Sunday dawn put on quite a show all day long with trees caught in the fray of tearing, gusting wind, unable to sway like the resilient like the coconut palms – Malabar almonds, old mango trees, rotting banyans sections, casuarina came crashing down on unsuspectingly parked cars, fragile homes…the badly fixed tin roofs of migrant workers living in rented lodgings flew off and rain water seeped in the dark hours of the early dawn and many spent the night indoors beneath an umbrella and plastic sheets, shivering and waiting for the morning. To see the full scale of the damage to their homes and devastation all around.
Of course there was no question of going off on any domestic work jobs. Pathways of housing colonies were flooded with tree and leafy debris, the result of mass scale slaughter of trees. It was only on Monday morning while stepping out it was evident that cyclone Tauktae was no lover of trees. Around town huge rain trees had fallen blocking the main promenades including the Campal promenade…. so many broken Malabar almond trees with their inedible green pods scattered around, these are not real almonds. But see the mango trees fallen with their green fruit still hidden here and here awaiting some hands to reach out and pluck them away so easily now! Street cows and groups of buffaloes had a field day feasting on the fallen fruit of mangoes and wax apples and even lush green mango leaves which on auspicious days folk would be seeking to string into toran.
Summer’s blooming trees were overnight shorn of all their floral beauty creating soggy wet carpets down on the road and street sides. One cannot miss it – what a windfall of timber for those who hurriedly started hacking away at the fallen trees here and there and carting away firewood for use in cooking and other purposes!
Even as the Fire Station people rushed up and down to rescue people trapped here and there, marooned in flood waters invading their ground floor and pools of water rising. Take a look at some of the scene-scenary as mighty trees gave up the ghost in Panaji city, not so smart city after all, for while the PWD people know how to quickly cull and chop of trees, few know how to plant them well right from scratch – so that a tree may lay down deep roots and withstand any gusty gale coming along to so easily topple it down, say when a cyclone hits town. Nothing to do but go around clicking photographs!
