Getty ImagesLandslides that hit the southern Indian state of Kerala earlier this week have killed 196 people. More than 200 people are still missing and some 9,000 people have been moved to relief camps. BBC Tamil’s Muralitharan Kasiviswanathan reports from the badly hit district of Wayanad.
“Have you seen this girl or her body?”
Clutching a mobile phone close to her heart, a woman goes from village to village, asking people the same question.
Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find distressing.
She shows two pictures of her niece Anita, who is missing.
In one, Anita is flashing the victory sign as she poses happily with her aunt. The nine-year-old moved to live with her after the death of her mother a few years ago.
The other photo shows a disfigured body on the ground.
The woman, who was too traumatised to disclose her name, said she received the picture on WhatsApp from some friends who thought it was Anita.
Since then, she has been trying to locate her niece, but hasn’t been successful. She is not sure if Anita is dead or alive.
Her story resembles that of many others who are desperately searching for their loved ones.
Nearly 200 people are still missing after vast swathes of the area were flattened by thick torrents of mud and water on Tuesday.
The disaster stuck at 2am as most people slept, giving them little chance to escape.
Wayanad is known for its cardamom plantations and tea estates and has several popular tourist spots. Hundreds of plantation workers live here with their families in makeshift houses made of tin and clay.
On Thursday, rescue officials said that all the people trapped in tea plantations had been rescued and chances of finding more survivors were slim.
They added that rescuing people and retrieving bodies were proving to be difficult due to heavy rains that were continuing to lash the area.
Their operations were also affected because the bridge that connected the badly affected villages of Chooralmala and Mundakkai was washed off.
Officials have now constructed a temporary metal bridge to ferry equipment to the affected areas.
The BBC also witnessed scenes of chaos as anxious relatives waited outside a school where some of the unidentified bodies have been kept.
Amaravati, who narrowly survived the landslides, is still in shock. She is from the neighbouring Tamil Nadu state, but has been living in Chooralmala for years.
“It had been raining continuously for two days. When the first landslide struck, we went to our daughter’s house, which was a short distance away,” she said.
But when they got there, they saw “mud and debris everywhere”.
The family fled to a nearby coffee plantation and took shelter there for the night.
But her husband’s brother and nephew were not as lucky. Landslides buried their house and Amaravati and her family are now trying to identify their bodies.
Ponnaiyan, who ran a tailoring shop in the area, said he and his family narrowly escaped death on the fateful night.
“But many of my neighbours, relatives and friends, who were sleeping peacefully in the night, have all died,” he added.
When rains became too heavy, Ponnaiyan took his family to his shop thinking they would be safer there. But soon, an electric pole fell on the shop’s shutter and water started flooding in.
“When I opened the door, I saw water and mud washing away everything on the road. I thought we would die there,” he recalled.
After they had walked for about half-a-mile in knee-deep mud, the ground collapsed again. The family then climbed up on to a nearby mound, from where they were rescued by officials.
The next morning, he decided to go back and check on his friends and neighbours.
“But everything and everyone had been washed away,” he said.
Almost everyone in the area had similar stories to tell. Many families have accepted that their missing loved ones are dead but some are still clinging on to hopes of a miracle.