@110 km/hr
Cyclone Aila struck on Monday, May 25. The warning came a day earlier, but the administration chose to snooze. It did not contact villagers. Now, with the 400 km-long embankment breached, people of the Sunderbans live with the threat of a high tide causing further damage.
The story of how millions became homeless. Reported by Alok Gupta in the Sunderbans, J Basu in Kolkata and Archita Bhatta in Delhi
Biplab Prasad Mridha furiously chopped the tree that crashed on his house in Kumirbari village. He stopped, glanced at the decomposing body of his uncle and looked up at the sky. He flung the axe away. The wood was soaking wet. There was no way he could light a pyre with the wood. Mridha would have to go against his religion and bury Harendra kaka, his uncle who succumbed to Aila
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