Widows of Kedarnath Flash Floods Ask, “Humare Pati Kab Ayenge?”

Video Editor: Rahul Sanpui

(This story was first published on 17 June 2018 and has been republished from The Quint’s archives to mark the release of the film, ‘Kedarnath’.)

It’s been five years since thousands were washed away by floods that ravaged Kedarnath and other hilly parts of Uttarakhand. But around 50 kilometres away from the hill-top shrine, a village still waits for the men it lost to the tragedy.

Located on the top of a hill near Ukhimath, Deoli was once a happy abode. Most of its men either had shops along the Kedarnath trek or worked in lodges around the shrine. But on the day the disaster struck, around 50 men from the village went missing.

With just one blow, the lives of 32 women in Deoli changed forever. They didn’t know if their men were missing, lost or even dead. As one villager after another chanted “don’t worry, they are coming,” the women too started repeating it in their minds. In the fields, at the kitchen, inside the temple and by the tear-soaked pillow “they are are coming, they are coming, they are coming,” the women of Deoli told themselves.

Life was a happy affair for Poonam, who was married with one daughter. Her husband would toil in Kedarnath, at a hotel owned by her in-laws. But the floods changed everything. Failing to reach her husband on the phone, she walked barefoot, all the way to Guptkashi.

I walked all the way to Guptkashi, where I found my in-laws. When I asked them about my husband, they didn’t utter a word, but just wept. Only then did I realise that my husband was dead.

Poonam

Having lost her husband, Poonam thought Deoli would stand by her. But Deoli too had changed. Today, the 30-year-old widow is left to fend for herself. No one from the village, she says, cares about them.

She is echoed by other widows, who say they want to move on with their lives, but feel stuck due to lack of support from the village and the government. They had received an aid of Rs 7 lakh each from the government, but that too has proven insufficient to rear kids and marry off their daughters. They were promised that a member of their families would be given government jobs, but that too has failed to materialise.

Today, failed by both their village and the government, the widows of Deoli have nowhere to go.