The next day we went to see villages in Beldaur block in Khagaria district. We drive for 4 hours on the state highway and all along the road we found villages on either side fully submerged.

People were living on the road in small tents for hundreds of kilometers!

After a few hours of driving, we reached what looked like a huge lake - which was really just fields now fully under the water. Our team told me that across this “lake” was a village Akaha where we were providing some relief support. I could see the outline of small huts at a distance. We sat in a boat and left for the village.

Most of the houses in the village had been totally washed away or destroyed. Some houses were being destroyed. In the photo on the right, there was house at the location these people are pointing to - which was washed away. Our boat went over the place where the house stood. In this village, the river has broken up into 3 streams and cut the village into 4 isolated parts.

The photo (below left), shows a river now, where there was a house earlier. Every passing day, the water is cutting the existing houses which are getting destroyed one by one! The photo on the right shows half a house - the other half has fallen down!

What was amazing is till the last minute - till their houses actually went under water - people are continuing to stay in their homes. When their houses go under, they move into their neighbor’s house! Isolated and cut off,`these people survive by helping each other out. We even saw a f5lly paralyzed man who was running an informal school for the children in the village at his home as they had no school to go to now!