Survivors of deluge searching for loved ones

PURNIA/FORBESGANJ (Bihar): With worst fears gnawing at the back of their minds, for the survivors of the Kosi deluge taking shelter in hundreds of relief camps it is a seemingly endless and mostly futile search for their loved ones.
    
Savitri Devi, a farmhand of Budhma village in Madhepura district, and Jagdish Bhagat, an affluent farmer of Jeewachpur in Supaul, share a common grief as they agonise over separation from their families.
    
Bleary-eyed Savitri spends her days looking for her two daughters and husband, who were lost in the melee that accompanied the evacuation, one of the largest during a natural calamity in the country.
    
From railway station to bus stand, from taxi stand to marketplace, Savitri's lonely search continues throughout the day until her frail and tired legs give way and she returns to the relief camp at night only to resume her unending search at the crack of the dawn.
   
75 kilometre away at Forbesganj, septuagenarian Jagdish Bhagat, who fled his home leaving behind his two daughters-in-law and six grandchildren, follows the same routine and with the same result.
    
"When water started gushing into my village, I was away from home. Within minutes, the water rose to the level of my chest and I took shelter atop a tree from where I was rescued by an army team two days later," Bhagat, taking shelter at the Marwari Atithi Sadan, said.

Bhagat's eldest son stays with his family near Kathmandu and two younger ones work in Chennai. The wives of his two yonger sons and their six children lived with him at Jeewachpur.
    
"How will I face my sons? Will I tell them that I ran away fearing death leaving behind your families?" says a contrite Bhagat.
     
Asked if he had phone numbers of his sons living in Chennai, he said despairingly "all phone numbers were writen in a diary my daughters-in-law kept. I am an old man and don't remember their phone numbers or address."
    
The story of Bhuvan Yadav, a daily-wage labourer of village Khabda-kanhaili in Narpatganj, is no different.
    
The water level was barely two feet till around 8 pm on August 27 but rose to about five ft in a jiffy forcing him to run for life as his wife and son were watching TV at a co-villager's home some distance away.
    
"I don't know where my wife and son are and whether I will be able to see them again," he said at the Lee Academy High School relief camp.
    
Sabrunnisa of Kashipur village in Madhepura district taking shelter at a relief camp at Anupnagar-belauri on the outskirts of Purnia with her two children is shattered.
    
Having lost her five-year-old son Mohammed Raza, who was swept away by strong currents of the Kosi, she has stopped taking food for the last several days.
    
"How can she eat knowing that her son is dead?" says Ameena glumly watching Sabrunnisa feed khichdi to her two surviving children, tears rolling down her eyes.

Rajendra Sardar, a well-to-do farmer, fled his home in Kumarkhand in Madhepura district to Purnia when floods visited his village.
    
Sardar somehow managed to reach Forbesganj from where he went to Purnia by train. Wandering in the streets in tattered clothes and hungry, he met Ramdhani, a rickshaw puller, who was surprised to see his condition.
    
"He is my malik (employer) ....I used to work on his fields before I began pulling cycle-rickshaw in Purnia," Ramdhani said. Both the employer and his former employee are now living in the latter's shanty.
    
"I will try to get any job that is available here and after collecting some money move to Punjab or Delhi," says Rajendra pensively.
    
With water receding in some areas of Purnia, Madhepura, Saharsa and Araria districts following reduction in the discharge of water in the Kosi from Nepal, the task of evacuating the marooned is becoming increasingly difficult.     

Thinking that the worst is over, several families in the flooded areas refuse to move out and want the army and navy rescue teams to continue to deliver supplies.
    
With water becoming shallow, the motorboats are getting stuck and need to be pushed by jawans.
    
A correspondent travelling in one such boat found a family in Banmankhi area of Purnia gladly accepting foodpackets but refusing to be evacuated.     

"Come again tomorrow and also bring along some medicines against fever and diarrhoea," a man told the rescue team which tried in vain to persuade him and his family to shift to a relief shelter.