HEROES AND SUPERHEROES

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While everything is sinister about adversity, it has this uncanny knack of bringing forth the least expected. Having received copious rains, dams, rivers, lakes, ponds and every possible water body, in the state were filled beyond their brims. In no time, waters spilled over and flooded every piece of land, dry or wet, high or low.  Mountains came crashing down and torrents took along everything in its path, man, animal, houses, trees, everything.  It looked like, that the floods would overwhelm and consume the state. Overwhelm, it did.  But an effective Chief Minister and his efficient administration fought back with a well calibrated response that ratcheted up to contain the crisis. Consume it could not, because, against the disaster’s diabolic advance, stood a resilient people and a resolute band of heroes and superheroes. Some of the heroes were well-known, others local finds and the “superheroes” an everlasting gift from a terrible catastrophe.

As the flood situation worsened, the State approached the Central Government for deploying Army, Navy and Air Force besides Paramilitary forces and NDRF assets for rescue operations. Proactive and appropriate deployment of these forces ensured immediate response to crises, where required. Heroism of our defence personnel has always been food for folklore. Each and every rescue mission they launched, was full of grit and valour. Trained and conditioned to be in such situations, these valiant men and women, oblivious to needless controversies, committed themselves to their assigned tasks. Their efforts resulted in saving countless precious lives. Devoid of glamour, unrecognised and excluded from star-studded functions in good times, men and women in uniform are saviours and real-life heroes. As always, they silently lived up to our expectations by countless acts of selflessness.

As conditions turned hostile, another band of heroes silently emerged in every locality. Locals, mostly young men and women turned out in hordes to become saviours and helping hands to those affected by floods. Day and night, these young men and women were seen all over, on the road helping stranded traffic, evacuating hospitals and even carrying people across neck deep water. They didn't even think once before transforming themselves into “human stepping stones” to help the frail and ill to board rescue boats. Few even lost their lives. Often dubbed as selfish and “mobile-phone” addicted, the millennium generation irrespective of class, creed and religion emerged as a band of heroes that made rescue operations successful. The sight of so many young men and women willingly doing, whatever they can for their brothers and sisters of the community, without being called to it, is a sure sign of strong virtues and values inherent in our society. If this sense of commitment and selflessness continue into the rehabilitation phase, no force on the earth can stop Kerala reaching "Maveli" times that fuel our unique traditions.

The greatest and most precious find of the terrible tragedy was a class of people, who while eking out a living, mostly are themselves at the receiving end of nature's fury. The State, while reeling under pressure to find boats to save flood affected people unexpectedly opened the Fountainhead of goodness and bravery. Fishermen of Kerala emerged through the unprecedented ordeal as the “front-line warriors” against the catastrophe. The “never-ever-seen-before” superheroes of Malayalee community became the very soul and pivot of rescue operations.

There is not a single pair of eyes without tears or a chest that doesn’t swell with pride, when Malayalees speak of the selfless fishermen of Kerala. Fearless, yet mortals themselves, they came, first in ones and twos and then by the hundreds, each one a guardian angel. They gave up their daily lives, knowing that without their daily wages families back home would be hungry.  Yet, unmindful of their own safety, they pledged themselves to the rescue. Nobody asked them to. Nobody forced them to. Nobody motivated them to. Nobody promised them compensation. They came with their boats and launched themselves straight into rescue mode. Without them and their omnipresence, many Malayalees would have ended in watery graves. Their wounds from Ockhi cyclone have not yet healed. They haven’t yet come to terms with their own losses. But, they came to save a marooned multitude drowning in their own backyard. Monetary compensations and recognition cannot match what they gave, for what they gave was themselves or what is left of themselves after Cyclone Ockhi.

One can only marvel the way in which nature chooses to unravel goodness in human beings. With a multitude of such people around, if there is a heaven on earth, it is here, in God's own land where our fishermen live.

It took us a flood’s hell, to discover our own angels.