“Washed Away…”: A Son’s Heartbreaking Farewell To His Mother Amidst Bengal Floods

Khanakul, Hooghly District — The air around felt heavy, laced with the smell of the damp earth and despair as the sun broke through the lingering gray clouds. Off the main road, vast swaths of agricultural lands were still under water, and from a distance, the concrete houses looked like floating ‘shikaras’. As we moved ahead, we saw an elderly man slowly wading through waist deep water, making his way towards the main road.

Seikh Saibul Islam, 63, had a very long day. His white kurta was wet up till his chest, reflective of the depth of flood water that he has maneuvered his way through but the true depth of his sorrow ran much deeper. He lost his mother on Sunday night. The following morning, a dutiful son had to endure a herculean task of finding a little patch of dry land where he could bury his mother. Flood waters have engulfed the whole village and there was barely any dry space for anyone to stand, leave aside the scope to dig a grave for burial.

“I lost my mother, she was my world. She, 99 years old, was keeping unwell due to her age. Because of incessant rains, she had caught fever after getting drench once. But the floods made it worse. I couldn’t take her to doctor, I couldn’t arrange for a boat to ferry her to a hospital. Our house was completely cut off from the land. She died without any treatment” Saibul narrated the ordeal, choking on his words and then broke down recalling his struggle to find a place for her funeral. “Along with few other villagers we carried her body to a heaped land, south of our village. That was slightly an elevated land. We dug the mashed soil and created a scoop. We buried her there. No tomb or not a single flower and I am not even sure if the grave would stay if the water surges again”, he added. 

Saibul had travelled to town for work, leaving his mother behind, when the torrential rains transformed their modest home into an island surrounded by rising waters. His mother, weakened and bedridden after being soaked by the relentless downpour, remained helpless even as floodwaters invaded their home. By the time Saibul returned to the village, the situation had grown dire. “Finding her in that water was like a nightmare,” he recalled, his voice trembling as he fought back tears.

They had sought refuge on the roof of a neighbour’s home, but the storm showed no mercy. The two were left exposed to the vagaries of nature, rain drenching them, and with no access to medical help. Saibul watched in anguish as his mother’s condition worsened. “On Wednesday night, I could feel her burning with fever. She was so weak, just clinging to life”, he said, shaking his head, still in disbelief and then after a pause he continued “We were trapped there, and I couldn’t do anything to save her.” But, the ordeal was far from over. Hours before his mother breathed her last on Saturday night, their house surrendered to the surging water. It was a mud house with partial brick base but the bricks couldn’t survive the test of time and the streaming water.

“On Saturday, the house collapsed. On Sunday, I lost her,” he murmured, his voice barely a whisper amidst the eerie silence that has settled around, only interrupted with the sound of streaming flood water. “I never imagined it would end like this”, he mourned and quietly walked away. Saibul was headed to Kolkata, some four hours away from Khanakul, to be with his relatives. He didn’t turn back towards us, he had nothing to look back to in Khanakul. His mother is gone, their house is no more and the road leading to their home is obliterated. “I’m leaving,” he said, looking toward the horizon where the main road lay. “I have to start over, but it’s hard to think about a life without her.” As he began his journey to Kolkata, the weight of grief clung to him like the damp clothes on his back. With each step, he carried not just the memory of his mother but the burden of survival in a world that had turned so unforgiving.

Khanakul in Hooghly, one of the worst flood affected districts in Bengal. According to police estimates, more than five lakh people have been affected in Khanakul alone. Bengal government claims more than 50 lakh people are directly or indirectly affected in the worst floods ever since 1985, the state has witnessed. Blaming the Central Government controlled dam Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) for release of excess water without the consent of her government, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had termed it “man made floods”.

As we saw Saibul slowly blend into the horizon, we found ourselves stranded in middle of a flooded village, once home to many and now looked no less a ghost town, where stories like that of Saibul’s echo through the murky waters. He and many like him, now face the daunting task of rebuilding their lives, armed only with memories of love and loss.