Imagine going to bed at night not knowing whether you will be washed away by the sea. The roaring waves keeping you awake as they hurl themselves on the shore. And the sea just a bit closer when you step out in the morning.
Every day the villagers of Ghoramara island in the Sunderbans shore up their mud-built dykes with their bare hands only to see seawater pouring in the next morning. One man has built and rebuilt and lost three homes in three years.
They are the victims of global warming which is wreaking havoc on the India-Bangladesh border.
Everyone should read the story which appeared in the Observer yesterday. This is what global warming can do.
Concise, simply written, with telling details and quotes, this is a story that haunts you.
Maybe I can't forget the villagers in the story because they live in the Sunderbans, which is not far from my hometown, Calcutta (Kolkata). But I can't recall reading anything so moving in the Calcutta newspapers.
This is how the story begins:
Dependra Das stretches out his arms to show his flaky skin, covered in raw saltwater sores. His fingers submerged in soft black clay for up to six hours a day, he spends his time frantically shoring up a crude sea dyke surrounding his remote island home in the Sundarbans, the world's largest delta.
Alongside him, across the beach in long lines, the villagers of Ghoramara island, the women dressed in purple, orange and green saris, do the same, trying to hold back the tide.
For the islanders, each day begins and ends the same way. As dusk descends, the people file back to their thatched huts. By morning the dyke will be breached and work will begin again. Here in the vast, low-lying Sundarbans, the largest mangrove wilderness on the planet, Das, 70, is preparing to lose his third home to the sea in as many years; here global warming is a reality, not a prediction.
Read the rest and save it.
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