The town that India declared dead
On the night of December 22, 1964, a cyclone made landfall at the southeastern tip of the Indian subcontinent with winds clocked above 280 kilometres per hour and a storm surge that put the entire spit of land under water. Dhanushkodi had roughly 1,800 residents. A passenger train, the Pamban-Dhanushkodi Express, was crossing the causeway when the surge hit. All 115 people aboard were killed. By morning, the town had been stripped to its bones.
