Five months after landslide, Irshalwadi remains engulfed in sadness

MUMBAI: The spectre of death still hovers like a thick cloud over Irshalwadi, the picturesque village 66 km away from Mumbai which was wiped out by a landslide five months ago. Even today, the skeletal remains of dead cattle, dilapidated homes and destruction are visible everywhere one looks.

The landslide of July 19 killed 29 villagers while 87 went missing beneath the mud and rubble. The remaining members of the community are still wondering when destiny will be done dealing them a rough hand. Eking out an existence in the nearby Chouk village, in containers that were supposed to be temporary shelters, they wonder if they will ever go back from living along the noisy highway to the beautiful forests they once inhabited.

“The containers can’t replace our homes,” said Gangu Pujari, 35, who lives alone in the blue-and-white Container No 5. “Our houses were four times their size. We were amidst Nature. The landslide took away our loved ones, our houses, our very life. Our bodies are here but our souls are still there.”

Pujari lost her parents, three brothers and two sisters-in-law. “After my husband passed away ten years ago, I returned to the village to stay with my parents and brother,” she said. “On that fateful evening, I was visiting my daughter’s house. By the time I returned the next morning, everything was wiped out.”

The 42 containers, initially meant as temporary shelters, have now become the default abodes of their reluctant occupants. Kisan Ravi Wagh, who lost his parents in the landslide, reflects on the emotional turmoil. “I visited the village twice in the last five months,” he said. “The sight, especially at night, makes me uneasy. Yet, that’s where my parents lie.” Kisan and several others remain confined to the container colony, barely moving out to find work and rarely interacting with others.

Nitin Pardhi, who lost his father and a brother in the landslide, is overcome by sadness every time he visits the village where he was born. “We are trying to get some labour jobs to survive here,” he said. “But we are frustrated living in these containers. This place is next to the highway, and we are not used to noise and concrete. To escape, I keep going to the village, but I am left teary-eyed, seeing the devastation.”

The women of the colony, who would earlier wake up at 5 am to cook as other family members prepared to leave for farming or labour, have a different schedule now. “Most of us wake up after 8 am here,” said Sukri Pardhi (28), who lives in a container with her husband and two children. “The last five months were crucial for farming. Most of us had paddy fields, which we left unattended. As we spend our days in the container, we have nothing to look forward to.”

Padma Tandel, the aanganwadi worker who has been associated with the village for the last 13 years, looks after 16 children under the age of six at the aanganwadi which has been set up in the container colony. In the last five months, she has grown close to the families, who all come to share their despair with her. “The aftermath of the landslide had been very hard on the villagers,” she said. “They are not used to living in such a concrete environment. They are used to growing and consuming their own vegetables and grains. Here, they have to buy everything.”

Ravindra Pardhi said that earlier, ₹500 was enough to see a family though an entire month but now even a day’s survival was difficult on that amount. “Earlier, we survived on the grains and vegetables we cultivated,” he said. “Now, whatever little savings we had are being utilised for our day-to-day survival.” Ravindra added that the cattle that survived the landslide had been left behind in the village, as there was no space for them in the new colony.

The villagers have also taken a financial hit on another front: the stream of trekkers visiting the famous Irshalgad Fort has dried up. Before the landslide, Irshalwadi saw at least 15 to 20 trekkers every weekend, sometimes twice that number. “They would stay over in the village,” said Ganpat Pardhi (30). “While I was the guide, the women helped me prepare food for the trekkers. It was a good source of income for us. But since the landslide, the village border has been sealed.”

The villagers did not celebrate any festival this year. “We used to celebrate Ganeshotsav, Navratri and Diwali together,” said Ganpat. “We had one Ganpati idol for the entire village. It will take a long time before normalcy returns to our life.”

The villagers continue to visit Irshalwadi although it is now a ghost village. “I have been there thrice; the last time was during the pitru paksha period when Hindus pay homage to their ancestors,” said Pujari. “The sight of the village kills me. I keep feeling that my parents and sisters-in-law will emerge from one of the lanes and call out to me.”

While going back to the village looks next to impossible as there could be more landslides in the next monsoon, a few of the villagers have started farming in the lands next to Morbe Dam. “We have to survive, for which we need to do farming,” said Pujari.

Meanwhile, construction of the houses that 48 Irshalwadi families will be relocated to has begun on a 6.5-acre plot of land in Chouk Manivali. Last month, Kalyan Lok Sabha MP Shrikant Shinde, who visited the colony to celebrate Diwali with the villagers, announced that the 500-square-feet homes would be ready for occupation in three months.

Raigad district collector Yogesh Mhase said that the piling was over and the plinth-level work was on. “The houses will be ready by March or April 2024,” he said. Added Kailash Shinde, joint MD of CIDCO, “Forty percent of the work is over. They can occupy the houses by Gudi Padwa.”