Stepping into the compound of the Government Upper Primary School at Valiyathura in Thiruvananthapuram, one is met with a rather strange intersection of two worlds. In one of the buildings, students sit in their classrooms, attentively listening to their teachers. In another, scores of families go about their household chores. The UP School, located in the coastal region of Valiyathura around 10 km away from the city, has become a ‘permanent shelter’ of sorts for many area residents who have lost their houses in the recent years due to recurring coastal erosion, rough weather, and the Cyclone Ockhi of 2017.
There are three buildings in the school compound that have been divided using a sheet. One side comprises two buildings – both used as rehabilitation shelters – while the single building on the other side of the sheet continues to function as the school. This division was made after offline classes resumed for students in November 2021, after a long break owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many families, however, have been living in the school since 2016, when coastal erosion started to become a recurrently destructive affair, rendering their houses unusable. To make things worse, Cyclone Ockhi unleashed catastrophe in the coastal region in 2017, causing even more people to abandon their seaside houses that frequently suffered damages due to the wildly temperamental sea.
“Teenage boys and girls live in the building with no privacy at all. We parents have to always be cautious to ensure that our children do not watch and imitate everything we do. We are scared for our kids’ future,” Christy, another resident, tells TNM. Earlier, young boys and men used to sleep on the verandah of the third building, which was functioning as the school. However, after the school reopened, this had to be stopped. “When that was the arrangement, we at least had some privacy because half of the residents used to sleep there,” she adds.
Most of the men who live here, except the elderly, are fishermen, while some women work as fish vendors to make a living. “We lost our house to sea erosion in 2016, before Ockhi. At the time, there were 19 families living in the school. Now, up to 110 families live here. The number started to go up because rough seas and erosion became a regular occurrence after Ockhi. This is only going to become more frequent in the coming years. The situation in the area is already very intense, so much so that we are not even able to go to work at times,” says Christopher, who has been staying at the school with his family for seven years.