What the storm brought home: A photo-essay from Nagapattinam
All photos: Barnali Ray Shukla
A cyclone. A phone call. A two-dimensional time-machine. Barnali Ray Shukla shares the tug of emotions after storms of the past and the present in this poetic photo-essay.
The sea won’t change its address,
lives along the coast have gone,
but those on earth and water stay together tied with an invisible thread,
that ‘red’ one some speak about, the one we don’t see.
I was glued to the news trail of Cyclone Amphan a few weeks ago, waiting for my mother to call—she hadn’t been reachable since the cyclone made landfall. Finally, the phone rang. I nearly sprang up from my seat to answer, but it wasn’t my mother on the other line. I stared at the unknown number on the screen and answered without a clue of what to expect next. A Tamil-accented male voice gushed out, with the familiar warmth of an ally who remembers you on a Sunday morning.
“Hello Madam, Kali here!”
“Oh, Hello Kali…”
“You remember me, Madam?”
“Yes, of course!”
“Thaank you. Bombay verrrry bad news. You okay, madam?”
“Yes, okay…how about you?”
“Here not much scare. All okay, but my mother asking for something…”
The gushing on phone paused; he was speaking in Tamil at his end, most probably with his mother. Many voices. The voices in my head were on overdrive. This could be a call for help with money, a job request, or perhaps, a request for special prayers. Soon, Kali was back on the line again.
“Amma says you didn’t send the pictures...”
“Pictures?”
“… of our shooting of local peoples in Nagapattinam.”
“That’s right… Yeah, I …I didn’t send them.”
“Hmmm…please don’t mind. You see, Amma telling lockdown time, more more time, so I calling.”
I hadn’t had the heart to tell Kali that that my laptop had crashed a week ago. But that wasn’t his problem. That wasn’t anyone’s problem.
Fortunately, one had been trained by the tyranny of machines. I had backups for all images. The external hard drives slept in the second drawer of my writing desk. The husband took a coffee break; for a change he had read my mind, that I needed his desktop. I promptly started browsing folders gathered over the years. Photographs are two-dimensional time machines. I hopped on one such machine, zooming back to November 2014, Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India.
My visit to Nagapattinam was ten years after the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Ten years after the sea stood tall, silent, and in less than a minute, left behind a trail of destruction. More than 275,000 lives were lost from the day after Christmas, more women than men, in fourteen countries across two continents.
The drive from Chennai with Prithviraj Manivelu (aka ‘PM’) was chatty, and thankfullym uneventful. I was grateful to him for filling up the silence, even though I missed some of his takes on speed, vegetarian food, and weight training. PM understood my need for some research on my own, a need for a space and some buffering, before an idea takes up form. He pulled over at a tea shop by the highway at the edge of the town. Here, the chorus of suggestions from veterans and youngsters alike at the tea shop all recommended that ‘three-wheeler-fellow’, Kali.
Kali’s proficiency in English was the winning factor. A phone call and twenty minutes later, I met him.
A Thalaiva song on the soundtrack. Unlike his effervescent playlist, however, Kali’s own words were, “Some loss still not showing on camera”. There has never been a way to peg emotional tidings. His family members were fisherfolk, back in the business. The town had gotten together on the shore, some to bury their moments, few shared stories of sons and daughters. Some spoke in silence about thousands still missing, a load they bore in waking hours.
The day had remained overcast. I couldn’t hide behind dark glasses anymore.
When Kali dropped me back to the hotel, he stared at my face, as if looking for a clue if the day had gone well. I promptly put my glasses on. Kali asked about my dinner. Food wasn’t on the top of my mind. I pointed at a placard nearby. Kali winced when he read ‘READY MEALS’.
PM appeared from the lobby as he must have spotted my return. He spoke to Kali, in Tamil. Kali responded in English.
They both turned to me asking if I wanted fish curry rice, homemade. All I asked was if I could visit the fish-market.
Last week, the phone rang, and it was Kali again.
“How is your family, Madam?”
I still hadn’t heard from Ma, but I wanted to believe what I heard myself saying. “All good, all good.”
“Your parents in Calcutta no? Still Living?’
“Yes, they are fine.”
Unlike his effervescent playlist, however, Kali’s own words were, “Some loss still not showing on camera”. There has never been a way to peg emotional tidings.
“We see TV. Plus, my Bengaali friends here, only crying, their hometown house gone, no food no work also no…”
“Hmm”
“Don’t worry madam, all okay-a soon”
“Thank you so much, Kali.”
“We pray. Bye”
Lately, I, too have been praying a lot—almost unconsciously, without knowing what to call a prayer. There has been no grammar, no ‘One God’; just a contemplation of healing, without being needy of wants that we are shedding so well and so fast.
The husband handed me a coffee and the aroma brought me away from the fishing village. I had stopped searching, I had found the images Kali wanted. I sipped the coffee, made a phone call this time
“Hello Kali?”
“Yes, Madam.”
“Photos ready. Shall send by WhatsApp.”
“Great… When?”
“Just now, after my coffee.”
“My mother saying one thing only—tell Madam not to make sad story”
“Good idea Kali”
“No joking, no?”
“Tell Aamma, romba good ending”
Kali seemed to sign off happier now and the abrupt ‘bye’ did not happen. The husband and I drank coffee in silence. He had no clue about this Sunday I’d had, and he didn’t asked questions either. He wouldn’t ask until I shared my storms with him.
The coffee felt good. I started sending the images when I peeked into the Folder 2. The ones I had shot on my second day at Nagapattinam. On that second morning, I had stared wide-eyed, looked up and paused. I heard a young voice calling out. He told me I could go closer. And I did, to see a grid of metal by the water.
Today the grid must have grown into a ship, the boy must be in High School. People with no forwarding address, as they only go fishing.
The Bay of Bengal continues to keep the region on its toes. But I’ve heard that the Amphan has found livelihood for the local labourers locked by laws. “Partly true”, confirms a cousin. My mother, since Sunday, shares only happy stories. She has stopped sharing sadness. That’s what storms bring home, perhaps—or something that we choose to remember. A moment or two when we were happy. Documented wonder.
Time to call for grocery, while I hold on to frayed edges of the news that Nisarga has spared the maximum city. We can’t time-travel every day, but for now, I’m on the beach, by this fence. I rest my case.
***
Barnali Ray Shukla is a writer, filmmaker and a poet. Her writing has featured in SunflowerCollective, OutOfPrint, Kitaab.org, OUTCAST, Indian Ruminations, Vayavya, Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry II, indianculturalforum.in, Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians, Madras Courier, Bengaluru Review, Hibiscus, Borderless, Voice&Verse, UCityReview, and A Portrait in Blues. She has one feature film to her credit as writer director, two documentaries, two short films, a book of poems, Apostrophe. She is now working on her third documentary and scripting her second script for a feature film. She lives in Mumbai.
