Man loses 26 family members in tragedy (2024)

It is a little after noon on Thursday, and just outside classroom 7-A of the Government Higher Secondary School in Meppadi sits a man who is very likely the embodiment of the human cost of the tragedy.

Sporting a dhoti and a T-shirt, a brown shawl over his head, Sultan MK, 47, a daily wage labourer, is well built, his face covered by a mask. The only visible part of his face are his eyes; eyes that have cried copious tears over the past two days; eyes that are swollen and red.

Minutes before, Sultan had risen, walking to one of the 16 mobile freezers kept in the classroom, the overpowering stench of formaldehyde coming through every time one is opened. He nodded his head in identification, and returned. The body was that of Afzal, his 43-year-old younger brother.

It is an exercise he has had to do over and over again.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, massive landslides hit Wayanad in Kerala, essentially wiping out the villages of Chooralmala and Mundakkai, in what is the state’s worst monsoon tragedy since 2018.

292 people are dead, and over 200 missing, with hopes that anyone will now be found alive fading fast. Twenty-six people from Sultan’s family are among the missing. Only 10 of their bodies have been identified so far. “Afzal’s body was retrieved by locals from the Chaliyar river near Pothakallu. We were able to identify him because his face was more or less intact. In all, we have found 10 bodies. There are 16 more to go,” Sultan says, his voice barely above a whisper.

In the three-storeyed government school which has doubled up as a mortuary, several survivors like Sultan, have spent two days looking for their families. Yet, the number and scale of Sultan’s personal tragedy is so grave, that he has difficulty remembering who is dead, and who is missing. “I can’t remember anymore,” he said.

He had known something was wrong on Monday morning. The rain kept pelting down in his village of Mundakkai, nestled among tea plantations, and he didn’t think it was safe anymore. “The river was constantly rising. I told my wife and three kids to pack some clothes and headed to a relative’s home five kilometres away. One of my relatives was also undergoing a surgery so I left for the hospital,” said Sultan. His wife and kids are safe, at the camp.

As he left, he told his brother Afzal and his family, who lived next door, to relocate as well. They did. But they went to Chooralmala; the second village that has essentially ceased to exist. “They thought it would be safe. But the landslide wiped out both villages,” he said. Among the dead yet to be found are elderly relatives, women and children — aunts, uncles and cousins — among them a one-year-old child.

“On Monday itself, I had told our local ward member to get everyone to relocate. But he said “if you want to go, you can go”. If they had moved out everyone from both villages by Monday evening, it wouldn’t have been such a massive tragedy,” he said.

A little after 12.30pm, one of Sultan’s friends walks up to him, and mumbles in his ear. “You should come check this body. The birthmark on the hand looks like one of ours,” he says. Sultan stands, robotic in his movements, and enters the classroom again, looking for one of his own.