One is fascinated by the perseverance of Indian Army personnel, inspired by the prayers and good wishes from people across the globe and bolstered by the never-say-die spirit of 23-year-old R. Babu, who was rescued after he slipped and fell about 400 feet three days ago into a cleft on the steep rocky Malampuzha hills.
Babu’s ordeal and the happy ending of the story bring to mind a less publicised, but equally traumatic and triumphant story of how Maju Manuel (Puthenkandam), 46, survived a fall off the cliffs of Kolahalamedu, near the popular tourist haunt of Wagamon, on June 20, 2008.
Hailing from Kadanad panchayat near Palai, Manuel is a frequent visitor to the hills of Wagamon, which attracts thousands of tourists every year. The hills and the nip in the air are a reminder for him of his brief stint with journalism in Nagaland. He recalled his Wagamon trip on that unusually wet afternoon with intermittent drizzle keeping the views around the hills under a haze and temperature down. He drove in with three of his friends into what is arguably the most-sought-after viewpoint on Wagamon-Ealappara Road, the ‘suicide point’.
The idea was to drive the van they were in to the top of a little hillock located close to the suicide point. His friend, who initially took the van failed to negotiate the steep climb and the wet, clay soil on which neither the vehicle’s breaks nor gears worked. Manuel, then a member of Kadanad panchayat, all of 34 years and bursting with energy, stepped in to demonstrate how a steep slippery hill should be tamed.
Manuel took to the wheel and climbed about half-way up the slippery mount after which the vehicle refused to move. He slammed down the breaks and changed gears to keep the vehicle under control, but it slowly started moving down, aided by the oil-like clay, which offered no traction. Manuel recalled how he felt safe despite the van backtracking, as he could not see the back of the road with the glasses behind van black-taped. Looking to the sides, he said, he felt safe because there was no immediate danger. The van gradually rolled off the hillock into a gorge even before he realised it. “I was not aware I had fallen off the cliff in my vehicle until the van hit a tree on the way down,” he said. As the van hit the tree, he was tossed off to the door opposite the driver’s, which opened without any resistance. On impact, he was ejected from the van and deposited at the base of the tree, as the van plunged further down the gorge. He said he realised immediately he had broken his left leg, hand, and left rib cages. The knee cap had turned liquid. The pain was excruciating. But he said he did not loose consciousness, which allowed him to cry for help even as his friends on the top of the hill realised, after about 45 minutes of search, their friend had plunged down the gorge. They located a winding way down the hill along a little stream, guided by the cry for help from Manuel.
When they located him, he appeared to be in high spirits. Manuel said he was happy he had not died after falling so steep a gorge and there was hope for another day. His friends, except one, trekked back the tortuous path bringing more people down along the stream. They strung their dhotis together to make a stretcher to carry him back to the top of the hill in about three hours. The rescue operation that started about 3 p. m. ended successfully about 8.45 p.m. when Manuel was set down on an ambulance to be taken to a hospital in Thodupuzha. Manuel later went on to become the president of the panchayat and is a happy family man today, who pinches himself occasionally to remind himself of a great miracle.
