Life After The Boats

lts livelihood system wrecked, a fisherfolk’s village near Chilika lake struggles with Fani’s aftermath

- Sandeep Sahu

POLYTHENE sheets have been made into makeshift roofs. A little distance away, the mud houses people once lived in lie in heaps of rubble. Shabby-looking children loiter on the village road; the elderly while away their time in the temporary bamboo structure built by Save the Children outside the village to serve as the community dining place. Take a stroll around the village and it becomes clear that more than two-and-a-half months after Cyclone Fani devastated the Odisha coast, life is yet to become normal in the worsthit Satapada area of Puri district.

Welcome to Bhoisahi, a village of 85 families under Satapada block predominantly inhabited by Bhois (a scheduled caste). With no land—not even homestead land—of their own, the majority of people in the village used to earn their livelihood by fishing in the Chilika, the largest brackish water lake in Asia. But that was before the cyclone. With their boats and fishing equipment wrecked by Fani, there is little they can do to feed their families.