Alka Singh, a producer at a Gurugram-based production house, has not been able to meet her family in Sarkhaghat, Himachal Pradesh, in a time of crisis. The roads connecting her village were washed away in a recent landslide. Ms. Singh’s elderly father, brother, and sister-in-law live in the foothills, a danger zone where most houses have been vacated, their anxiety escalating as they see water washing away farms, roads and houses around them every other day.
Over phone calls about eight to 10 times a day, Ms. Singh and her father try to hide their emotions but she is left in tears every time she hears the cries in videos from her home State posted on social media. She then calls back her family to check on them, only to cry again after the call ends.
In Frames | Cry of the hills
“I have quit watching TV news as it left me more panicked. But how much can one can skip social media with the kind of job I have? Ms. Singh asks, helpless as she is, nearly 400 km away from her family stuck in the deluge.
She learnt that the Head of the Department of Mathematics at Himachal Pradesh University had died in a landslide. “The death of someone you know moves you to the core. He was the guide to so many people I know,” she said.
While Ms. Singh has not been able to make her way home, Srishti Jaswal, a Delhi-based journalist, remained calm for the first six days, but then decided to head home when she heard her parents, uncle and aunt, part of a joint family, were packing their bags, scared their home, like many others, would be hit by a landslide too.
At Mandi, where her family lives, power outages have left people charging devices whenever they can.
“I spent stressful days and sleepless nights as I couldn’t be of any help to my family amid all this deluge. But my breaking moment was when my mother said she was packing the jewellery and essential documents so that they could run in case of an emergency, after hearing the homes of our relatives had been washed away,” Ms. Jaswal, who took multiple forms of local transport to get home, said.
“There was a scary moment when my phone’s battery was low and I had to switch it off. But now I breathe more easily because I am with my family,” she told The Hindu.
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Ashok Guleria is a policeman in Himachal Pradesh. His house was washed away but he returned to work within hours, and his story was featured in headlines. Mr. Guleria has a son studying in Mohali and a married daughter living in Firozpur. He advised his children, both of whom wanted to return home to help, against visiting. “We have a pain which will last forever but how can I put their lives in trouble too?” Mr. Guleria asked.
Panic gripped Riya Sohini, currently studying in Bengaluru, when she heard of the temple that had collapsed in Shimla. Her mother, her only parent, lives in Shimla.
“I wanted my mother to come to Bangalore. But there is no way to do that immediately. We just helped each other emotionally, sitting thousands of kilometres apart. Now, things are better, so I am a little relieved,” Ms. Sohini said.
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While the cause of great fear, the catastrophe has also strengthened family bonds. Connections are forming over social media to get information on the ground from neighbours and others living nearby in affected areas. In many instances, people who haven’t spoken to each other for years now try to check on each other. Many have shared their agony on television, breaking down upon seeing people they know.
Deepan Joshi, a senior journalist in Delhi, whose extended family lives in Mandi, says that conversations with friends who are in a similar position have become longer. “We share the same pain of seeing our people and towns in a bad shape,” he said.
At a radio station in Dehradun, panicked calls of people seeking help for loved ones in the hills are more frequent than ever before. While many distress calls are from victims of landslides, some seek help for their families. “Sometimes, the cries on the other side of the phone are heart-wrenching,” Devanggana Chauhan, radio jockey for Red FM, said.
