Kalpetta: Firshad P (26) lost five members of his family. Noufal Kalathingal (42) lost 11 -- including his wife, three children, parents, and siblings. Reena Sandeep (41) lost 18 members of her extended family.

On the night of July 30, 2024, the hills of Chooralmala and Mundakkai came undone, swallowing homes, schools, and entire families.

In the days that followed, as the terrain settled into silence, those who survived -- with nothing but the clothes on their backs -- faced a brutal question: how to crawl back?

Onmanorama spoke to the creators of three ventures born of loss but built on help and hope.

Firshad and his four childhood friends, once resort owners in Mundakkai, carved out a niche with 'WynCrave', selling ₹5 tubes of honey and spices.

Noufal opened a restaurant and bakery he named 'After July 30' -- not just to mark the tragedy, but to walk forward from it.

Reena and seven women started 'Bailey Umbrella', using the first batch of steel ribs and fabric sent by the same soldiers who built the Bailey bridge across the Punnapuzha in 31 hours.

Their paths haven't been equal. But in each, there's a mix of grief, grit -- and the quiet power of showing up for one another.

'Honey in a tube'
Five childhood friends from Mundakkai -- Shuaib Abdul Razak (25), Firshad (26), Shuhail P P (25), Sinan Siraj (24), and Rashid Babu (25) -- had built a promising life together. They ran two resorts and a travel agency, drawing tourists to Wayanad’s misty hills. Then came the landslide.

Firshad lost five family members -- his parents, brother, sister-in-law, and infant niece.

"My wife, child and I were supposed to be at home. But for some reason, we went to our ancestral house next door that night. Around 1.30 am, we stepped out after hearing a sound, and our house was just... gone. Nothing remained where our house once stood," said Firshad.

Shuhail, a sales executive in Dubai, was in Mundakkai for his wedding. That night, as heavy rain lashed the hills, his parents, brother Sinan, two grandfathers, and a cousin came down from Puncharimattom to his house, thinking it was safer. Shuhail was airlifted with multiple fractures after being trapped under concrete for hours. The other six died.

Shuaib, a graphic designer with the world's top sneaker company, had returned to Dubai 20 days before the landslide, after attending Shuhail's wedding. When he asked for emergency leave, it was denied. Two hours later, he had the company's relieving letter in his hand. "I resigned and came home. But frankly, I came to a place without a home. I called my friends," he said.

Shuaib, Noufal, and 40 other young men were huddled in a friend's building in Meppadi. None had the courage to go home.

"All were grieving. I told them: grieving is fine. What we had to lose, we lost. What’s the next plan?"

It was a brutal awakening. "We knew we couldn't go back to our resorts in Mundakkai," said Firshad.

They considered the honey business — they had sold bottled wild honey to resort guests. "But we realised the market was already crowded with honey brands," said Firshad.

The breakthrough came in August during a late-night tea run to the Ghat Road at Vythiri. On the way back, one of them picked up a Rs 2 tube of Choki Choki, the chocolate paste they grew up squeezing straight into their mouths. "One of us said why can’t we sell honey like this? In a tube? All of us agreed. There was nothing like that in the market," said Shuaib.

They began working on the idea but couldn’t find the right machine. "Our concept was a slim honey tube. A company in Coimbatore offered a ketchup-sachet machine. That wasn’t acceptable to us," said Shuaib.

Yet, they worked with the company. The machine failed three times. The fourth time, it finally worked.

They named their company WynCrave, a nod to Wayanad, and a craving for the goodness of the land.

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s People’s Foundation invested ₹10 lakh as seed money under the Arise Meppadi Rehabilitation Project. The Thodupuzha Jamaat even bought them a delivery van. With this support, the friends expanded into flavoured teas, coffee blends, and spices. "In all, we have 35 products under the WynCrave brand," said Shuaib.

But Tube Honey remains their flagship. "At ₹5, it’s an easy pick," said Rashid Babu. "It’s doing well near schools and in resorts and gyms. We’re now trying to export. If that happens, we’ll know we've made it."

And Shuaib knows he made the right call when he quit the MNC -- because he can never quit on his friends.

The Bailey Umbrella
"Around 1.30 am, our bed started shaking. We thought a heavy vehicle was passing by. That's when we were thrown off the bed. Water had already entered the house," said Naseema V K (43), a daily wage labourer.

She woke others in the lane quarters (padi) of Mundakkai tea plantation and ran towards the bridge across Punnapuzha to reach Chooralmala. "People on the other side shouted there was no bridge anymore," she said. They ran up a hill. But the second landslide brought the water up there too, she said.

The same day, July 30, the combat engineers of the Indian Army left Bengaluru. In just 31 hours, they erected a 58-metre-long Bailey bridge and reconnected the villages.

Nearly a year later, the Army's Madras Engineer Group stepped in again. This time, with something quieter. They sent umbrella-making material -- steel ribs, pre-cut fabric -- to eight women from Chooralmala and Mundakkai. "That's how Bailey Umbrella was born," said Sajana P K (38).

The eight women, still piecing their lives back together, needed something to clutch on to, not only to financially stay afloat, but also to steady the mind.

Reena Sandeep (41) had lost 18 members of her family. Sajana lost her neighbours and close friends. Shobha Radhakrishnan lost her newly built home.

Around mid-April, Kudumbashree organised a workshop to train women affected by the landslide in umbrella-making. "The workshop brought the women from Chooralmala together and gave us some peace and happiness," said Shobha.

They picked up the craft in just three days. So when the Army sent raw materials for 390 umbrellas in May, they stitched and sold them in no time. "So we bought more with our own money. We had to take a loan for it," said Sajana.

They even pledged their jewellery to pay the security deposit for their cramped little unit opposite the Meppadi school.

Each of them stitches around seven umbrellas a day, meticulously by hand. But they soon realised — stitching was the easy part. In a cut-throat market, finding buyers and securing orders proved far more difficult.

"Sales are happening only from this unit. Most of the orders come from employees in the collectorate," said Reena. "Next year, we hope some supermarkets place orders. That will be a support for the eight families," said Sajana.

The Bailey women have also begun a pickle business, a small step to stay afloat once the monsoon ends.

What they need now is a little handholding, some working capital to buy raw material to turn their venture into an all-season story, like the bridge that inspired them.

After July 30
Noufal's restaurant on the Meppadi–Chooralmala road is hard to miss. But most people read the bright orange board as just 'July 30 – Restaurant & Bakes.'

The name begins not with a date, but with a cup of coffee. And inside that cup, in soft white curves, is a word most people overlook: "After."

Because after is where Noufal’s story begins. After the landslide, after the loss.

"Some people feel it's a negative name because it was a tragic day. But I insisted," said Noufal, who lost 11 members of his family that night — including his wife Sajna (35), daughters Nafla Nasreen (13) and Ishal (4), and son Mohammed Nihal (13).

"I thought of Puthumala, the landslide in 2019. Many people don't even remember the date now. I didn't want Chooralmala to fade from memory."

The Puthumala landslide of August 8, 2019, claimed 17 lives and left 83 families homeless.

He was working in Muscat when the landslide struck. Only the bodies of his parents and eldest daughter were found. The rest were confirmed dead months later — through DNA tests.

"Each morning I went to the panchayat, hoping for a match. I’ve seen everybody brought in from Nilambur and elsewhere," he said.

After the mourning, he was preparing to return to Muscat when Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen (KNM), a socio-cultural organisation, reached out and asked him to stay. "If I had gone, I would not have returned," he said.

They offered to help him start a business, and that's when he remembered Sajna’s dream. "It was my wife's desire to start a bakery. She makes beautiful cakes. She said she will help me by making cakes."

Noufal had already begun saving to leave Muscat for good. With KNM’s support, 'After July 30' came up in Meppadi -- part restaurant, part bakery.

All six of his staff -- Gafoor, Bindu, Prasia, Rasia, Shafeek, and Tanseeq -- are fellow survivors of the landslide.

If KNM helped him start over, the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre in Muscat -- the Indian Union Muslim League’s overseas arm -- gifted him a home at a location of his choice.

Last week, Noufal remarried, a quiet, hopeful new chapter. And 'After July 30' has become more than just a cafe. It's a place where survivors gather. Sip tea. Share stories