'Have I lost my home forever?': A Wayanad native talks about the horror and why no one is any longer safe

It was around 5.30am, and I was in deep slumber, shrouded by a blanket and oblivious to the gentle drizzle outside my Kochi home, when my phone rang. It was a friend from Delhi, her voice laced with urgency. “Are you okay? Is your family safe,” she asked. Startled, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and asked, “What’s the matter?” Her reply sent a chill down my spine. “A huge landslide has hit Wayanad, wiping off around 400 houses.”

For a moment, my world went blank. With trembling hands, I searched the internet for ‘Wayanad landslide’ and saw the horrifying headlines. The landslide had struck Chooralmala, just 22km away from my native place in Wayanad. During that agonizing day, my phone buzzed continuously with calls and messages from friends, all desperate to know if we were safe. I was paralyzed with fear, unable to provide any reassurance. The word ‘safe’ had lost its meaning. For us – the people of Wayanad – safety is an illusion now, a cruel joke.

None of us can truthfully say we are safe or fine anymore. Guilt, fear, and anxiety have become our constant companions. Our idyllic district has been reduced to a landscape of uncertainty and loss. We are now mere remnants of a place we used to call home, haunted by the memories of what was and what can never be again.
Born and raised in Wayanad, in a Christian family that migrated from Kottayam in central Travancore, I grew up immersed in the adventurous tales of my ancestors. My father would recount stories of their struggles, fighting against the land, rain and wilderness. They toiled with blood, sweat and sheer will, traveling the ghats and carving out a space for themselves, cultivating crops and building a future.

As the daughter of a teacher, I was also exposed to the rich history of this land – tales of Pappathy and her sons, Karinthandan, Pazhassiraja and Tipu Sultan, ‘Naxalite’ Varghese and Ajitha, S K Pottekkatt’s Visha Kanyaka and many more. These stories were intertwined with myths more precious than gems, and our land was adorned with serene spots that could make paradise itself jealous. Wayanad boasted more environmentalists and eco-preservers than anywhere else in Kerala.

I remember sleeping on the banks of Pookode Lake under the full moon, basking in its silvery light. We would walk across the Wayanad ghats, learning about every plant and tree that thrived in the lush greenery. The mist, the rain, the vibrant green landscapes, the majestic mountains, the flowing rivers and streams, the wild boars, elephants, tigers, rabbits, peacocks, and deer – they were all a part of us.

But now, everything has changed. The land that cradled us has turned hostile. Where did we go wrong? What caused our beloved Wayanad to revolt against us? Is it the insatiable greed and craving for luxury that engulfed the generations of migrants? Or is it nature’s way of reclaiming what we have selfishly taken from it?

With utmost guilt, I must admit that this harmony began to crumble with the arrival of migrants. Until the 1920s, this land belonged to those who were known as the ‘traditional natives’ of Wayanad. This included the tribal communities, the Jain community residing around Kalpetta, the Muslim community from Nadapuram, and Nair families from Malabar. It is said that they would leave a portion of their paddy fields for elephants to eat. If tigers killed their cows, they did not complain, believing that the land and its bounty also belonged to the animals.

However, the arrival of people from central Travancore, including my ancestors, brought with them a different mindset -one of possession and ownership. The intolerance towards anything that ‘invaded’ their ‘land’ turned them into adversaries of nature. The valorous stories I heard as a child, I later realized, were tales of unconscious destruction. By planting crops unsuitable for the land and building grand mansions, we disrupted the delicate balance of the ecosystem. We failed to understand that the space we sought to dominate was never truly ours. This misunderstanding has now led us to question our very existence in this harmonious land. It is too late even to apologize.

Wayanad, abundant with resources, has long been exploited by sandalwood smugglers, poachers, and the mafia. Clearcutting, mono-crop plantations, quarries, deforestation, and man-animal conflicts have ravaged the land. Despite protests to protect the Western Ghats, development efforts clashed with the nature of the land. In this ruthless push for progress, the tribal communities and farmers bore the brunt. Farmers faced despair and suicide due to land and livelihood loss, while tribespeople suffered from malnutrition and illness, their suffering overshadowed by those profiting from the land’s exploitation.

Tourism has made some wealthy and brought ‘Western-style development’ to our land. Now, our region is filled with resorts, homestays and staycation hideouts along every river, stream, mountain, and any spot deemed ‘beautiful.’ In the past 30 years, I’ve watched my homeland morph -its terrain, culture and food all altered. Traveling home has become a gruelling ordeal of hours stuck in traffic on the ghats, with people dying enroute to emergency care in Kozhikode due to gridlock. Our peaceful surroundings are now clogged with sightseers and vehicles, littering roads, feeding monkeys, and snapping selfies, all while our daily life is disrupted. This unstoppable tourism has also contributed to severe climate change, bringing us scorching heat and insistent rain. What was once a luxury, owning a fan, is now replaced by the necessity of air conditioning.

Our land’s beauty has become a curse. What we need is not these mesmerizing pictures of our land but a safe home. We forgot that true development should have harmony with nature, not at its expense. Now, as we stand amidst the ruins, we must confront the painful truth: our greed and indifference have led us to a point where even an apology seems inadequate. The damage is done, and the legacy we leave is one of regret and irreversible loss.
I write this with a heavy heart and a deep sigh that echoes the collective grief of my people. We must remember that the world is not solely ours. This is a desperate cry for change from a representative of a land that is slipping away from us, a vibrant place teetering on the brink of becoming a no man’s land.