Birds twitter and a small cluster of egrets wings gracefully overhead, going home. There's a hint of a nip in the air. Yes, it's pretty almost to a cliche, this evening, one like you might expect to spend almost anywhere in rural, farmland India in the middle of November. Only, as far as I can see in any direction I choose, the paddy is not quite the familiar brilliant green I'm used to. The fields are filled with a visibly festering, sometimes bubbling muck.
Telephone poles lie in it, twisted and trailing forlorn wires.
The palms look as if someone has smacked them hard. Everybody talks of how, with the loss of the tree cover, the temperature in the area has already risen appreciably. And the columns of grey smoke that dot the scene tell the tale I now know well. This is Erasama block in Jagatsinghpur District, Orissa, a couple of weeks after a cyclone slammed into the state. The destruction and death it caused are impossible to comprehend, believe or describe.