1999 Super Cyclone in Odisha

It was the time when I was just 4 years old. That's why I don't have a full memory, but I remembered a few scenes from that incident. This year that cyclone completed 18 years. That was the last cyclone of 20th Century. Maybe nature did it in a huge amount. 

Durga Puja was finished at that time. We were 6 people at my home, me, my parents, my little sister and one of my aunty with her daughter. At that time, my was too small, even she couldn't talk. I don't have any idea about the starting of the cyclone. When I woke up in the morning I saw, a small house beside our main house was broken due to heavy rainfall. In that house, we had our kitchen and cow-shed. My father shifted the cows to another room of our main house. He couldn't shift all the items from the kitchen. Luckily we had shifted all our rice bags from that room to our living room. That house was totally broken. Some of our trees were grounded over the night. 

At that time, there was no electricity in our village. So people couldn't get much information about the cyclone. A number of people lost their home. At that time, there were not many buildings. The people who lost their houses went to our High School because, at that time, there were the cement buildings. Even we had lost that house and had only the room vacant. The other was occupied by two cows and one buffalo. At that time we had a small radio, which helped to get some idea about the flood in all over Odisha. All the papaya trees and banana trees were grounded inside our boundary. Those papayas and bananas were our food in those days. Since that was the rainy season, people had made some water root to the canal. That's why more water flowed to the canal thought that way. 

After the cyclone, the relief came from different sources. Polyethene and some foods donated by some people. At that time, we saw a number of helicopters in the sky. 4 to 5 helicopters were flying on the sky per day. At the end of the cyclone, a huge number of monkies died in our village. A number of trees grounded in that cyclone, but luckily, anyone didn't get any hurt from that. Maybe that was due to god.

 It was a long year to that cyclone, but people have not forgotten that fear. Even they bring some foods for the next seven days when this 29th October comes every year. The last cyclone of the century gave a huge fear in everyone's mind.