Inside Punjab’s ‘last village’: life on an island surrounded by floodwaters

The location of Mohar Jamsher makes it unlike any other place in Punjab: the River Sutlej on three sides, and Pakistan on the fourth.

“From the second week of August, flood waters have submerged our crops, and water kept on increasing afterwards… from fields, it entered the lanes of the villages and in the low-lying houses. It seems that our house is an island… water, water everywhere, and still most of us are putting up in the houses only,” says Amar Singh, a resident of Mohar Jamsher. “If we see towards the other side… the Pakistan side, too, is underwater,” adds Amar Singh.

The lanes are knee-deep in dirty water. “Water has entered the lanes of the village… a few houses, which are on high ground, have no water inside, but then there is water all around… if we step out, the lanes are full of water. We get skin problems if we walk in this water for some time,” he further says.

The village has nearly 900 residents and 200 houses. Seventy per cent of these homes still have at least two people staying inside. “Can’t leave the houses just like that… theft can happen or our house can get damaged,” reasons Gurvinder Singh, whose wife, Nirmala Rani, 32, gave birth to a baby boy on August 27.

The delivery was anything but easy. Gurvinder Singh, a daily wager, recalls how the tractor was their only hope: “On August 27, when she experienced labour pain, she was taken in a tractor as at that time, riding a tractor was still possible… then she delivered a baby in the civil hospital the same day through a Caesarean section as it was a high-risk pregnancy.”

Gurvinder Singh’s wife went to her parents’ house in Panje Ke in Fazilka after she and the baby were released from the hospital. Gurvinder Singh’s parents, however, continue to remain in their waterlogged home in Mohar Jamsher.

After seeing the plight of Nirmala Rani, the family of another pregnant woman made a tough choice. “After looking at how difficult it was to take Nirmala to the hospital amid floodwaters, she (my wife) shifted to Maujam village (near Mohar Jamsher) flood relief centre on August 29,” Darshan Singh, a villager, says. On Saturday, his wife delivered her fourth child – a baby boy – at the civil hospital.

“We will stay in the relief camp till the time water doesn’t recede in the village. It is not possible to take my child to the village now,” Darshan Singh adds.

For the villagers, boats have become lifelines. There is only one manual boat here, rowed by locals who know the Sutlej like the back of their hand. “We have lived all along the Sutlej all our life and hence we can swim well and can row the boats as well… hence we don’t fear living in the village with floodwaters around,” says Jagga Singh, a septuagenarian.

Yet, danger lurks. On August 31, tragedy struck when 62-year-old Paramjeet Kaur’s leaking roof collapsed in the wee hours, injuring her head. “She was admitted to Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Faridkot and was discharged only recently… She is in Maujam relief camp as of now and is recovering,” says Divesh from the health department’s mass media wing.

Floods are not new to Mohar Jamsher. This is a village hardened by crises – wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999, evacuations in 2016 after the surgical airstrike, and even after Operation Sindoor earlier this year. Today, 1,400 acres of farmland lie underwater, including 200 acres beyond the barbed wire fence where farmers cultivate under BSF supervision. Nearly 500 acres of the total land remain under Sutlej’s creek, land for which farmers don’t even hold ownership rights. That means no compensation – unless the government intervenes.

As Amar Singh sums up, the struggle has only begun: “Health issues, rehabilitation and repairing damaged houses are the next challenges now… once water recedes fully.”