THE DELHI TORNADO
The date was march 17,1978. The place was India's capital Delhi. The time was about 6pm. It had been a normal eventless day so far.
The all-yellow local train was already pulling out of Minto bridge station when I arrived. This mini-station was at the back of the super bazaar in connaught place in New Delhi.
I had arrived from the office a bit late and now I had to run along the platform to catch this moving inter-city to Faridabad. I was, in local parlance, a daily passenger, a MST (monthly season ticket) holder. No need to waste time at the ticket window for each trip.
That day it had been cool, cloudy and windy here in New Delhi. I entered a compartment and found a place near a window on the opposite side. Throwing open the window shutter I settled down to read the Arthur Hailey book I was carrying. It would be a one hour journey. As I peeped out of the window, I noticed, far into the north horizon an odd shaped cloud formation that was hanging low. I knew that it was the general direction of the university of Delhi area.
What I saw was a mass of ominously dark clouds at the middle of which was a long narrow shaft of dark clouds that had descended to the ground. I had never before seen such a formation in my life. I dismissed the idea that it could be a tornado. It was totally unthinkable. Delhi was not in USA ! India had only cyclonic storms and that too in coastal areas.There had never been a tornado in Delhi as far as I knew. But I did not like that cloud formation. There was definitely something evil about it.
Back in Faridabad, after a bit of essential shopping in the neighbourhood market and a refreshing bath, I was looking forwards to a sumptuous dinner. I switched on my Bush transistor radio and tuned in the nine pm All India Radio news. That was a daily routine to catch up with late news.
And there it was in the nine O'clock news - the news about those ominous clouds. A tornado had struck north Delhi and had cut a path 3 miles long and 50 yards wide and everything that fell in the long narrow path of the funnel of the tornado had been totally devastated by its vicious force. There were many deaths, and hundreds of injured people.
I read this in horrid detail in next morning's newspapers.
Right at the moment when my train was racing towards Tilak bridge, the next stop, a group of Miranda House girls were sitting in the new library reading room, reading books and magazines. Suddenly the outer wall of the library gave way to the demonic suction of the tornado's funnel and bricks flew up into the belly of the tornado, followed by a huge number of books which were suddenly swept out into the sky. Since I don't remember anything now about the girls in that reading- hall, I believe there were no casualties.
Seven years later Navtej Sarna recalled the events :
"......suddenly a furious sound
burst upon us. Flames sprouted from an electricity pole at the Maurice Nagar crossing and we began to sprint for shelter
as the transformation from cool and lovely to cool and deadly became complete. ....". and again ". .... it came hurtling down with a flash from Shakti Nagar towards Maurice Nagar. Then, it attacked the body as it began to suck up everything in its way into its gigantic self. And, finally, it sped
off losing its force gradually and emptying its bowls along the way....."
Some tornadoes make a considerable amount of noise while others make very little. It depends on the objects a tornado might hit or carry. A tornado moving along an open plain may make very little noise.
Much later vikramjeet too recollected thus:
" . . . . A tornado hit Northern parts of Delhi in the year 1978. It took its route though Delhi university (Daulat Ram college I still remember, as parapet walls were totally blown and seen
by me in the university campus), it moved from university to Kingsway camp side, MukerjeeNagar and Transmission Lines coming on its route were teared down totally in the Radio Colony. . . . ."
The funnel of the tornado had chosen to move, for a greater part, over a road and as it swept along this road full of grand old trees, every tree on the road was uprooted, Walls collapsed and many bricks were sucked up. A huge, fully loaded, DTC bus that was moving on this road was lifted up a few feet, turned 180 degrees by the spinning funnel of the tornado and deposited back on the road, facing the wrong direction and injuring passengers. There were reports of a bus overturning and some consequent deaths. An auto-rickshaw was sucked up high and deposited on the roof of khalsa college building.
This macabre dance of nature lasted barely a few minutes but the havoc it caused, the destruction it brought, was mindblowing.
I read the details from as many papers as I could lay hands on next day and one thought came up in my mind - What would have happened had the funnel of the tornado chosen the railway track from New Delhi railway station to Tilak bridge and beyond? The yellow local train was packed with hundreds of passengers. Trains do fall in rhe path of a tornado. In 1931 a tornado in Mississippi lifted an 83 ton train and tossed it 80 feet from the track!
That was the year 1978, thirty seven years back - in another time. Delhi has undergone a metamorphosis since 1978. And yet I can even today 'see' that same old, makeshift and quiet, Minto bridge station, that sleek yellow inter-city train, that window facing the north where I was sitting and, far away in the general direction of Delhi University that long dark narrow funnel hanging downwards from those ominous black clouds, devastating whatever fell in its path.
Very few would now believe that a tornado struck Delhi in march 1978!!
**********
