Desktop Doodles Tribute to the Twelve who died

"Please write a few words about the people who died during the rain that lashed Calcutta on Tuesday, September 24," texted a veteran journalist who, I am honored to mention, happens to read the column.

- DOLA MITRA

The news was trickling in as videos of Calcutta’s flooded streets were being broadcast live on television channels. Social media too was filling up with a plethora of footage showing waterlogged roads resembling rivers.

I received a frantic phone call from a colleague even before I heard in the news that people died of electrocution while crossing streets.

“The road near my house is completely choked,” she said. She herself was choking. “There is a corpse floating somewhere nearby.” The horror of that. The sorrow inherent in that.

You are out on a regular workday, crossing the road to catch a taxi or a bus or an auto or a train when a cloudburst takes place. The sudden downpour immediately floods the streets and as you rush to your destination, wading through ankle, knee, thigh, waist, hip-deep water, you bump into something: it’s a dead body.

But the sheer sorrow of it supersedes even the horror of that. The persons who died were also out on a regular workday with plans, no doubt, of getting back home to their families in the evening....perhaps of catching the evening news over a cup of hot tea or coffee on such a rain-lashed day.