Nobody knows about water and the havoc and horrors it can cause better than fishermen anywhere in the world. The fishermen of Kerala have gone through those horrors on many occasions in the past, especially after the tsunami of 2004 and Cyclone Ockhi last year. It was that capacity to understand the helplessness of human beings before water’s fury that had catapulted them into the mission of saving people trapped in floodwaters in the August 8-19 deluge.
Nearly 3,000 poor fishermen, who were struggling hard to overcome the starvation their community had gone through during the 52-day trawller ban, launched their 928 fishing boats not into the sea in the west but towards the land in the east within hours of receiving the first distress call from the District Collector of Pathanamthitta that was witnessing a flood of such magnitude perhaps for the first time in history.
“There was no time to think when our association leaders informed us about the disaster and the need of our involvement in rescue operations. Since we had to go eastward, we needed trucks to load our boats and these were arranged by the authorities. For nearly a week since then, we had not thought of even taking rest,” says Samuel, a fisherman from Thiruvananthapuram.
They did not have the essential implements required for such rescue mission other than their fishing boats, oars, physical strength, confidence, determination and selflessness when they deployed themselves in the flood-affected areas across the State but they fought the currents to rescue close to 70,000 people marooned in the deluge.
As many as 541 of these 3,000 fishermen had come from areas under the latin Catholic Church’s Thiruvananthapuram Archdiocese that had borne the worst brunt of Cyclone Ockhi. They had gone through the rescue mission with their 136 boats and they had reached 21 truckloads of essential commodities to relief camps apart from rescuing stranded people.
“It was not at all easy,” recounts fisherman Peter from Kollam. “We were rowing not through the wide expanse of deep seas but through floodwaters beneath which danger lurked in the form of compound walls, telephone pillars, street-sign posts and even cars and motorbikes.
Many a time, the boats’ bottoms hit such things and several boats got damaged,” he says. Peter says that more than the difficulty of the mission itself was the reluctance of the victims to leave their houses. “Those standing on the balconies of two-storey houses were refusing to board our boats. Convincing them about the urgent need to leave was a hard job and often they seemed not to understand what we were saying,” he adds. George, another fishermen deployed on rescue mission, described how untouchability was still a reality that rules social affairs as they had encountered during the mission. “One family asked me about our religion and caste. They were of a different religion in which they belonged to the so-called supreme caste…
“The family was standing on their balcony. We took the boat close to the wall. The family refused to board the boast saying they were upper caste people and could not touch us. We left only to return later by which time the water level had climbed further. This time they were prepared to come with us provided we did not touch us,” he laughs. Many of these sons of sea who had turned saviours for the helpless people trapped in the flood, however, were sad that the authorities had failed to acknowledge their service, at least initially. “When some of us wanted to return after the first phase of the mission because the boats had been damaged, there was nobody to even arrange trucks for us,” said a fisherman.
However, the Government organized special functions to honour the fishermen and thank them for their services after the rescue operations. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Fisheries Minister J Mercykutty Amma promised schemes for their welfare. “The Government will be with you, always,” Mercykutty Amma told them at a function the other day.
Many of the fishermen on rescue mission complained that the response of the Kerala society in general was not adequate when Cyclone Ockhi rained death and devastation on the coastal region last year-end. Most of the promises the Government had made to the fishermen in the wake of the cyclone were yet to be fulfilled, they pointed out.