Almost every year, around the monsoon time, various parts of the country get affected by intense flood.
States of Assam, West Bengal, Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh are among the worst affected. My series documents the flood affected areas of parts of Bengal – the Amta & Udaynarayanpur blocks of Howrah.
Through this documentation, I have tried to capture the life of people during the floods, their state of mind, their misery, their helplessness, and most importantly the hope that they have almost lost! While the State Government says that this is a manmade affair by the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), every year, but the people affected fail to believe that the government cannot do anything about it. “Why should we get affected every year? Why can’t the Government take caution, knowing that this happens every year?”, says an old man while crossing the bridge. But that’s something to debate. In the midst of this pointing finger at each other, the common man suffers. Only a few families can be rehabilitated to nearby school buildings, to govt. officers, etc, but most of them are not. Lack of electricity, drinking water, food, hygiene are the common challenges.
One of my photograph captures the story of a family, where the husband has suffered a stroke few months back, and is paralysed. They live in this one small room where hardly any sunlight comes in. Till a couple of days back the room had six – seven inches water inside. The outside still is flooded with knee deep water all around. No electricity, no drinking water, limited food and the husband in bed, paralyzed! The lady of the house have to be extremely alert all the time with her torch, just to prevent snakes crawling inside…
This is not the end, such stories are common. People travel from far off interiors to the mainline town by boat to fetch drinking and cooking water, food and medicines. Their distress is seen in their eyes. As the sun sets every day, darkness engulf their lives. Fear and hopelessness is the only thing that they sleep with, looking for a better dawn!
About Bhaskar Kundu
Bhaskar is a corporate executive working with a food and beverage MNC Company, based out of Kolkata, India. He pursues photography as a hobby and works mostly on travel and documentary photography. Bhaskar left behind his interest in the field of painting long back in school, owing to the priorities of college and career. Later, in 2008 he eventually bought his first dslr camera. His first award at a National level photography competition came in 2009 in the category of “Streets”; and thereon he started taking photography quite seriously and transformed it into a passion. Bhaskar’s photographs has been exhibited in several countries through International Salons and has some awards as well under his belt. He has been awarded the EFIAP (Excellence – Federation International Arts and Photography) distinction from France, FFIP distinction by Federation of Indian Photography and AICS distinction by the Image Colleague Society, USA for his photographic work so far. His works have also been featured in National Geographic Assignments, published in Better Photography and Asian Photography. For the purpose of photography Bhaskar likes travelling places, meeting people, and documenting the various facets of life.
