Families shelterless in Doaba’s Baupur Mand

Deepkamal Kaur

Baupur (Sultanpur Lodhi), August 18

Watching her house and all her belongings getting washed away with floods in front of her eyes was worse than any other nightmare Manjit Kaur of Ramour Gaura village has ever had.

The floods that hit the Baupur Mand area along the Beas a month ago led to complete loss of crop in 3.75 acres to her family and as the floods again hit the area, they have now become completely shelterless.

“There were two breaches that appeared near here yesterday. We had called for a boat and started collecting our valuables and essentials when the waters came in gushing. First our outer wall of our house collapsed, then a room followed by our washroom and finally the entire verandah. We barely saved our lives and got into the boat or else we too could have got drowned,” she said as she waited for her relatives to pick her up from a bridge close to the Mand area.

“I am shifting to our relative’s house nearby, but we know that no one shall be able to bear our burden for long. We have nothing left to rebuild our house. On the contrary, we had taken a loan, which we were planning to return once the paddy crop would be harvested. But now it seems impossible,” she said as her husband Nishan Singh and 16-year-old son Hussanpreet consoled her.

The plight of three brothers from the same village — Mangal Singh, Partap Singh and Surjit Singh — was no better as their house had started crumbling with water cutting it fast. By this evening, the frontal portion of their house had collapsed. The roofs of all three rooms had started falling off. “We can already feel the foundation giving way. We probably have just an hour by which we have to shift everything,” they said.

Several villagers were seen shifting their belongings on the first floor of an inundated government school in the same village from its backyard.

Sarwan Singh Baupur, a prominent farmer leader from the area, said: “There are at least four houses that have got washed away already and several others are in a collapsible state. There are at least a dozen in nearby villages, which have come falling in the last two days. I have accommodated few such families in my house since ours is on a raised platform.”