Last man staying - Landslide empties Limbu Gaon, almost

Sukhbir Rana, Picture by Suman Tamang

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Tingling, July 2: Sukhbir Rana stood sentinel 20 years ago. Now 76 and partially paralysed, he won't desert his post.

The retired tea garden guard is now the sole resident of Limbu Gaon, the village in Kurseong that reported the highest number of deaths in the landslide yesterday when rescuers dug out 12 bodies.

No one wants to stay in Limbu Gaon. What if there is another landslide?

But nothing made the septuagenarian with sparse white hair and scraggly beard budge - not the deaths around him, not the precarious route to his house, not his bad leg, not the risk of more rain and mudslides.

"Why should I flee?" Sukbhir replied with a question, asked if he feared for his life. "It (the landslide) occurred yesterday. I don't think it will occur again and again," Sukhbir said with certitude. "We have to face it."

Prodded some more, Sukhbir said he did not want to add to his family's troubles with his paralysed leg, although his relatives tried to persuade him to join them at the camp in Tingling Primary School, about a kilometre away.

"Well, I thought why create problems for my family? Who is going to carry me on a stretcher and then it will be a problem for my family members to look after me in a hall," Sukhbir said.

Early on Wednesday, a landslide flattened eight homes in Tingling's Limbu Gaon. Two clusters of houses, one at the top of a slope and another at the bottom, escaped unscathed. Sukhbir's family was among the lucky few.

To reach the house now, a visitor has to negotiate a slope from the level of the metalled road and move up another incline.

Sukhbir's son Ram Kumar Rana is a tea estate labourer. He moved to the school with wife Nisha and daughters Neetu and Nikki last night. This morning, Nisha came back to cook for her father-in-law.

"Everyone tried to convince him that he should leave. We tried in vain. All of us left but he refused to budge. What can we do when someone is so determined?" Nisha asked.

Some neighbourhood youths were ready to carry Sukhbir to the school. Anil Rana said he and his brothers "offered to carry him (Sukhbir) to the primary school but he refused. He stayed on, fully aware that so many people died just a few metres from his room."

Jyotish Thakuri, whose house is on a slope 10 feet higher than Sukhbir's house, tried to convince the neighbour but gave up eventually. "I left with my father Pramod Thakuri for the primary school though he also needed much convincing."

Sukhbir said he had slept soundly after everyone left the house. "My sleep was good. I slept early, must be around 8pm. Except for those people who disturbed me, I slept soundly and woke up around 5am," he said.

"Those people" were rescue workers from the paramilitary forces and the West Bengal Disaster Management Group.

Before this correspondent left, Sukhbir made a request, a grin deepening the creases on his face: "Please send me the photographs you have taken."