THE SILENT MIGRATION FROM CYCLONE CAPITAL

With no livelihoods in place amid the climate crisis, women and men in the Sunderbans are forced to move out

- Ritwika Mitra

Kaushala Mondal and her husband once nursed a dreamthat some day, they would build a pakka house in their village, Pakhiralay, in the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangroves that span the twin districts of North and South 24 Parganas in West Bengal.

The couple just wanted a house with a patch of green that can survive the storms that periodically batter the region and would not collapse every time floodwaters invade it. That was in the first few years of their marriage and after the devastation left by super cyclone Aila in 2009.

Nine years ago, the dream ended when Kaushala’s husband, a fisherman, was killed in a tiger attack when he was in his boat.

“We had so many dreams. But my fate is such that I have lost everything. My son was four months old, and my daughter four years when he was killed," recalls Kaushala.

As cyclones Bulbul (2019), Amphan (2020) and Yaas (2021) raged through the Sundarbans, local livelihoods suffered more, Kaushala grew more fretful of her children’s future.

“For how long can one survive chewing on muri and gur (puffed rice and jaggery)?"

They were barely surviving on the meagre income of her father-in-law Naren Mondal. She knew there was only one alternative: she would have to leave her children behind and leave for Kolkata to find work.

When Kaushala would hear of a job in the city, and prepare to leave, her son would be inconsolable. In 2021, amid the second wave of the pandemic, Kaushala moved to Kolkata to work as a domestic worker for a salary of ₹10,000 a month. She cares for the three-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter of a working couple. Occasionally, she goes back to the village.

“When I leave my children to return to work, they are in tears," says Kaushala.

Disaster displacements