6 Sep 2008, Bawanipur, Bihar

We were in Bawanipur – a village in the Purnia district of Bihar, which is by the side of the most affected district Madhepura. The government had set up a relief camp in a school. Our first medical camp in this relief and rehabilitation project.

I had been helping control the crowd, talking to the people – the impatient adults and the curious children. After a couple of hours I found another job close to the entrance of the school. And then a woman came up to me and said something that I did not quiet catch. “Have you not understood the instructions of the doctor? Do you need help with them?” I asked. She repeated herself – expressionless in her suffering, “Where do I stay? My house was washed away.” For a minute I was silent. “In a few days we will be setting up temporary shelters, maybe then you can stay there. Let us see how things turn out.”

She walked away with her child. And I was thinking – “What can I do? There are thousands of such people. What sort of suffering makes a face seem dead even when narrating woes that would surely weigh heavily on the mind – a house around which a life was built – smoke had risen from the top as the wind would have carried the aroma of cooking food, the sound of children playing around the house, growing up, a place of rest which you came back to after a long day in the paddy fields, some cows resting in the shade of the tree in front – home. And now all gone. And a face as blank as the wall when saying, “My house was washed away. Where…..?”

Where? Oh where? Can they not even hope? Will that face ever brighten with light and hope? Maybe you have the answer. Where?

– Nijamrita