Witnessing Cyclone Amphan: It was exciting at first, then the lights went out and the monster took over

It’s been two days since winds blew over the city at a speed of 185 kmph. Things are back to being calm — and warm — now, but the remnants of a devastating cyclone are spread wherever you look.

I had just finished my work in a morning shift on May 20 when the cyclone made landfall in Digha, the favourite childhood vacation spot of every Bengali family in Kolkata. This was around 3.30-4 pm on Wednesday. Over the next few hours, the cyclone would end up killing over 80 people in the state.

I shut my laptop and switched on the local news channels where reporters showed harrowing visuals of waves battering Digha’s beach constructions on which we would stand as kids and let the wind blow our cotton candies. The TV cameras showed huge black boulders uprooted from the old sand beach of our memories and thrown up on the road above.
(Photo: AP)
The visuals were chilling but the cyclone still seemed like a distant threat. Within an hour, it was closer home. The doors and windows started banging, declaring its arrival. It went on to kill 20 people in the city.

As we watched in horror standing at the balcony, leaves and even mangoes from a tree beside our house started flying away. No one dared open a window as the monster whistled above us.

There was a constant rattling of the closed windows since 5 pm that evening. It was borderline exciting at first, getting to witness such a fierce monster at close quarters. But soon, the lights went out and it took over.