The saga of the Uttarakhand deluge retold

More than a year after the Uttarakhand floods, journalist Hridayesh Joshi seeks some answers

The Himalayan state of Uttarakhand is no stranger to floods or other natural calamities. But the disaster of June 16 and 17, 2013 surpassed past ones in its ferocity and destruction. More than 5,000 people died, many were injured and many went missing during the flood that occurred during an unusually early monsoon and at the height of the Hindu Char Dham pilgrimage.

This was also India’s “first, televised Himalayan disaster.” Intrepid journalists from various television networks risked their lives to venture into the flood-hit areas and brought the images of death and destruction into our living rooms.

Those reports raised several questions in the public discourse: was this flood the result of nature’s fury, human folly or both? Could it have been prevented? What of the human cost of the tragedy?

Hridayesh Joshi, national affairs correspondent with NDTV India, has written his first book in an attempt to answer all this. Tum Chup Kyon Rahe Kedar was released on June 17 in Kedarnath on the first anniversary of the flooding. The book is in Hindi and its detailed reportage and compelling message strongly deserve an English translation so as to be available to a wider audience.

The first few chapters recount the logistics battle that Joshi and his colleagues had to fight to manoeuvre their way on mountainsides where roads once existed, finally catching a chopper to Kedarnath, the epicentre of the disaster. The scenes they encountered there were grim. Bodies upon bodies of pilgrims festooned the main entrance to the Kedarnath temple and the town. The Mandakini was still raging and scattered crowds of people huddled together shivering in the cold. The town was filled with boulders and sediment the river had brought down.

Joshi goes on to reconstruct the events on the night of June 16 and the next morning at Kedarnath, Rambada and Gaurikund, the three worst-hit spots. After interviewing many survivors and eyewitnesses, Joshi says the trouble started when the Chorabari Tal burst and its water flowed into the Mandakini, which originates from one of its snouts.

The second-longest chapter in the book, Jaan Ke Liye Jaan Ki Baazi, is dedicated to the countless volunteers who rescued and saved lives. Prominent among them were the civilian pilots of aviation agencies operating in the vicinity. They were not only the first to garner information about the disasters through their recces, but they also flew numerous sorties to rescue pilgrims. There were also graduates of the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering who saved countless people.

Joshi, however, has strong criticism for the state and central governments. State government officials tried to ‘manage’ the local media by withholding information. When exposed by the national press, they claimed everything was all right. Joshi relates how the national disaster relief agencies proved ‘toothless’, their members ‘not even knowing the basics of disaster response’. The police lived up to its reputation of being worthless. The government even withheld the army and air force, which started air sorties only on June 20.

Disaster response apart, the book also delves into the environmental side of the issue. The foreword by Chandi Prasad Bhatt and afterword by Sunita Narain detail the fragile ecology of the Himalayas and highlight how Uttarakhand’s mountains are increasingly coming under strain due to human interference in forests and river valleys. While Bhatt advocates the formation of a ‘Himalayan Warning System’ on the lines of the one for tsunamis, Narain stresses the need to find the ‘perfect balance’ between the environment and development activities.

Joshi’s book is a quintessential reporter’s diary, filled with eyewitness accounts. The narrative is fast-paced. This is the second work on the 2013-flood and the first non-fiction one (Pawan Kumar Pandey’s novel, A Long Journey, was the first). It is a testament to the truism that adversity brings out the best in man. And the worst, if the criminal apathy and negligence of the state apparatus were anything to go by. Ultimately, as Joshi writes in his preface, the book is a reminder to people of the potential dangers of complacency.