Forget Maoists, hail can kill you here

Nature has a way of cutting you down to size. Of saying, ‘you might think otherwise, but I am the boss.’

There was some time left for West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya’s election rally in Purulia on April 13. And we heard Mamata Banerjee was also addressing a meeting in Hura, 32 km from the district headquarter town of Purulia. We set off in our car: Moinuddin Ali Kurkaile, 20 -- who refuses to answer to any name but Rahul -- and who smashed his education against the Class X barrier and is now a driver by profession; Baishampayan Saha, also 20, who looks exactly like Jimi Hendrix -- complete with an Afro and a French cut – and is a freelance photographer; and me.

When we got there at about 3:15, we were told ‘Didi’ would arrive at 7 pm. So we headed back, looking for a place to stay. When we set out from Purulia, the vast arid lands of Purulia were being slow-baked in the biggest microwave there ever was.

A storm arrived out of nowhere, and within a couple of minutes we had to get off the road. The water was lashing against the windscreen like a thick sheet and you couldn’t see anything.

Then began a hailstorm. Hails as big as bricks. It was like being inside a building being demolished. We were stunned. Too stunned to react. Rahul -- who has a knack of making you double up with laughter with comments like: “These people (of Purulia) don’t get water to drink but why do they polish their cows with muddy water all the time?” -- tried to put the side mirror inside. A small hailstone ricocheted off the mirror and hit his finger, which swelled up instantly.

You don’t need rocket science to realise what would have happened to us if we got outside.

The storm intensified. The hailstones got bigger. The front window cracked and the crack was widening with every fresh salvo from what seemed like an AK-47 loaded with hailstones. Rahul drove the car down from the road bang into a little dune to protect the front window from hail.

And then, just as I sent an SMS to office requesting a nice obit, it was over. The storm had gone just as suddenly as it arrived. All that was left were pock marks all over our Tata Sumo (thank god it wasn’t a Maruti 800), and a surrealistic landscape of white, ice-like hails melting and giving off wisps of vapour.

All three of us think a 20-minute deadly hailstorm in the middle of nowhere in drought prone Purulia is proof enough that nature is the boss.