In the shadow of the devastating tragedy of the Wayanad landslides, Muhammed sat on the floor enveloped by grief and uncertainty. His eyes were glued to his phone, searching through voice notes, messages, and call logs in a desperate attempt to hold on to the last remnants of his loved ones. Outside the Family Health Centre (FHC) in Meppadi, where the victims of the landslides were being brought for identification, Muhammed has been waiting for five agonising days since July 30.
Among the chaos, Muhammed was looking for his daughter, Ummu Habeeba, her 10-year-old daughter, and other family members. Ummu and her husband Anees ran a small tea shop in Mundakkai. The landslides had claimed 11 of Muhammed’s relatives, and while five of them had been identified, six are still missing. With each passing moment, Muhammed’s hope waned, and he continued to look for the last videos and messages on his phone from his 33-year-old daughter.
“I last spoke to her around 7 pm on the Saturday before the landslides. She told me she had some work to do for the tea shop and that they were mixing batter for parotta,” Muhammed recalled, his voice heavy with emotion. He then returned to his phone, explaining the last messages from Ummu.
“Around 9 pm on July 29, Ummu posted a video of the rains in Mundakkai on our family group. I sent a voice message asking, ‘Is the rain decreasing?’ to which she replied, ‘Yes, it is’. I was relieved when I heard that. Usually, during heavy rains the entire family would come and stay with us every year,” he said.
“Her school classmates were planning a get-together, and her last message in their WhatsApp group was that they could plan a reunion if she survived the rain,” he said, his voice breaking.
Muhammed then called Ummu at 4.07 am on July 30 after a relative from Chooralmala informed him about the landslides. “The call didn’t connect. That was the end,” he said quietly.
Sitting outside the FHC and the nearby mortuary where the bodies of the victims are kept, he reflected on how things could have been different. “Ummu’s younger two children, who are 10 and 7, were in Chooralmala at their aunt’s house. But on the evening of July 29, their father brought them back home to Mundakkai. If they had stayed in Chooralmala, at least they might have been saved. The aunt’s family, with whom the children had stayed, escaped the tragedy,” he said.
Ummu’s 15-year-old son, Sajith Yusuf, who was with Muhammed, is the only one in his family who survived the disaster.
“Now, whenever a body arrives, we run and ask for details—whether it’s male, female, or child, approximate age, etc.—to see if it matches the people missing in our family. Only then do we go to see the body. We are tired of looking at all the bodies for the last five days,” Muhammed said, adding, “Seeing dead bodies is traumatic, but we did not have a choice.”
Ummu’s house was located right in front of the Mundakkai Juma Masjid; the entire area is now flattened.
Abdul Azeez sat under a tarpaulin covered area in the FHC compound, designated for the families of victims. He couldn’t hold back his tears as he recounted how his 5-year-old grandchild, Sidhara, was rescued from the muddy sludge almost seven hours after the incident.
“Sidhara was rescued around 10 am on July 30 by people who escaped the tragedy. She was found playing in the mud, completely unaware of what had happened. We found her the next day from the St Joseph relief camp,” Azeez said, bursting into tears.
Azeez is now waiting for news about his other granddaughter Shamna (10), his daughter Shabna (32), and four other family members. “Shabna called me on the evening of July 29, saying there was nothing to worry about and that they were moving to another house down the lane in Mundakkai. I was relieved after that. But…” he trailed off.
Every day since July 30, more than 100 people have been sitting outside the FHC. “For the first two days, we shuttled between the FHC, the mortuary, and the camps. Since everyone who was alive had been rescued, we stopped going to the camps to check if they were there. So, we started sitting here,” Azeez explained.
When an ambulance arrives with a dead body, all the waiting relatives rush forward, hoping they can at least recover the mortal remains of their loved ones.