Anshu Gupta

A truck carrying relief material in the streets of Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh after the 2009 floods.

The unprecedented flood havoc in 2009 battered the city of Kurnool damaging over 42,000 houses and killing around 15 in the city. The causes of the flood were reported as flood in the river Tungabhadra and inflows from Srisailam dam*.

Working in disaster relief is never easy. You see pain and destruction on a level that shocks you but you have to keep going because your work is important too. You see people who just a few days back had everything, now stand in lines to get ration and clothes. This is the power of a disaster, this is how quickly a disaster can attack the dignity of a person. It can ruin the life and the hard work of years. It has been named ‘Samaan’ because on one side of the truck you have things that once belonged to them but have now become waste and on the other side you have things on the truck that the people are solely relying upon for survival.

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