Restoration process begins after cyclone leaves trail of destruction

Thirty kilometres from the Jakhau port, where cyclone Biparjoy made landfall on Thursday evening, 48-year-old farmer Mubarak Jagan spent the last two days inside a government school, listening to the sounds of the violent wind and pouring rain outside.

- Maulik Pathak

All that time, he wondered what the damage to his property would be, but was grateful that he was safe. Every one of the 75 families in his village of Kosha were evacuated from their homes, part of a massive exercise in the state to take over a hundred thousand people to safety as one of the most intense cyclones in the Arabian Sea bore down on the country’s west coast.

On Friday evening, the winds still howled but the worst had passed, and Jagan went back home. The roofs of the animal shelters he had built, which his family used as temporary homes during the summer, had all been swept away. “We were relocated two days ago, and there is some damage, but at least we are alive. There is no electricity and we are using our tractors to charge our phones,” Gajan said.