A cousin on mine wrote from Baton Rouge, Louisiana:: "We had a big killer hurricane "Ivan" over here but forunately at the last minute it veered to the right and went over Gulf shores Alabama instead of New Orleans and by the grace of God we were spared. We live in Baton Rouge which is about 60 miles west of New Orleans and so we are fairly safe but if Ivan had hit New Orleans it would have been the end of the city as New Orleans is below sea level and the whole city would have been under 20 feet of water for the next several months or perhaps years, with the Lake Pointchatrain which is close to the city overflowing. All the folks from New Orleans had mandatory evacuation orders and so we ended up here with several evacutee families (all Mangalorans from New Orleans) in my house. There were about 50 people along with their kids, cats and dogs and other pets including a parakeet, hamster and a guinea pig! It was good fun - with Bow, Wow here and Meoh, Meoh there and here a Wow there a Bow, everywhere a Bow Wow - like the song "Old McDonald had a Farm". I got the drinks out (Whisky, Beer, Gin, etc.) and made a lot of Biryani, Sorpotel, Mexican Chillie Con Carne, etc. and we had a grand party with everyone singing old English songs and Konkani songs as well including "Voondrah Mujah Mama"!! . By 1 a.m. everybody was sort of drunk and with stomachs all full they slept in their sleeping bags on the carpeted floor while others slept on beds and a few others on sofas. It was quite hectic though. The next day, after they found out that hurricane Ivan had not hit New Orleans they all left one by one. Now the house is quiet again and back to normal. All the families that stayed in my house were Mangaloreans - doctors, etc.- some of whom I knew and others complete strangers! I felt sorry for several others (mostly Americans) who had to sleep in their cars or on the road side of the highways in the heat as it is height of summer now and much more hot than Bombay in summer. The hotels were all full all the way from New Orleans to Houston which is 600 miles away and I was told even the hotels in Houston were all full . New Orleans has 1.5 million people and they all had to leave. Usually it takes just about one hour from New Orleans to Baton Rouge but with the traffic on the freeway, it took over ten hours for some families from New Orleans to my house in Baton Rouge. When I told some on the phone that my house was full and that there was no place in my house some of them volunteered to sleep in my garage, so I could not say "No" to anyone. However, I did manage to accommodate everybody inside my house with the air-conditioning on and they were all very grateful the next day after a good night's sleep and good food."
Up till 1947, most Mangaloreans stayed in their owns towns and villages. The whole of Mangalore as I knew then was within a radius of 3 miles and we used to walk it out then, and that too bare foot. We did not even realize that people wore slippers or shoes and people in other countries went in their cars. Ignorance is bliss as we realized it later. Most of us lived frugal lives and developed hardy characters. After India got its independence from the British, most Mangalorean families sold their houses, and moved to Bangalore. The younger folks migrated to the Gulf, England, USA, Australia and Canada to work. This was the pattern for Indians from other parts as well.
Mangalore was the capital of the South Kanara district, which straddled the western coast of India. It had six talukas, from north to South they were Coondapur, Udipi, Karkal, Mangalore, Puttur and Kasargod. The district was part of the Madras Presidency, with a British Governor in Madras. In those days people traveled from place to place in buses and bullock carts. It was said, that my grandfather who became a coffee planter in 1900s used to walk from Mangalore to Coorg in the Western Ghats hitch-hiking on bullock carts. They were truly men built of steel. He was the first contributor to the new Milagres Church in Hampankatta, Mangalore, built around 1920 and his name heads the list of benefactors, on the marble slab which is embedded on the facade wall. It reads Joseph Pais.
Today, Mangaloreans all over the world show the same strains of vigor. But easy life brings with it the pitfalls as we tend to take the comforts for granted. Hurricanes are a reminder to go back to the roots and toughen ourselves, for any eventuality.