Watching the waters come in

As television channels feverishly report on the flood8217;s fury in north Bihar, I try hard. To identify my village among those submerged h...

As television channels feverishly report on the flood8217;s fury in north Bihar, I try hard. To identify my village among those submerged habitations, dotting the map of Darbhanga, the heart of Mithilanchal.

To my deep dismay, no channel shows my village, situated 40 km off the deluged Darbhanga town. I doubt if any reporter can reach there till the water subsides. Like other affected areas, the tiny, faceless hamlet of my ancestors is fighting a battle it was not prepared for.

Washed away bridges, roads drowned out of existence, hapless populace forced to sleep under the open sky. The images seem straight from the biblical calamities. But no Noah8217;s Ark reached the nearly 200 who perished in floods in Bihar and Assam.

The evacuees8217; desperation and their anger against politicians rises faster than the water level. 8220;A woman is in labour. There8217;s no medicine for her,8221; rued a disenchanted villager on the Darbhanga-Muzaffarpur highway. 8220;We are starving,8221; said another.

But the politicians8217; blame game continues. Like everything else in Bihar, flood and relief are politicised. Allegations of selective distribution of relief float even as the people8217;s misery magnifies.

Bihar, a sad metaphor for stagnation, corruption and backwardness, has produced some of loudest voices in Parliament since Independence. Yet, it has failed to get a durable flood control mechanism in place. Laloo Prasad Yadav who has misruled the state 8212; directly and by proxy 8212; for close to 15 years now, blames the successive regimes in Delhi for everything that has gone wrong with Bihar. 8220;Bihar ke saath anayay hua hai injustice has been done to Bihar,8221; he chimes repeatedly. Now he has trained his guns against neighbouring Nepal, for producing the waters that flood Bihar and Assam.

The national press has not given the flood stories the importance they deserve. Obsessed with droughts and starvation deaths, especially in Vidarbha, the papers don8217;t find flood a 8220;sexy8221; subject. 8220;The damage of drought is more than that of a flood,8221; commented a pundit on a channel. Ask those who lost their relatives, homes, crops and livestock to the flood waters. Stay a night in the dread of being drowned in the watery graves.

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As my nine-month-old daughter plays in my lap, I think of those children who cannot afford the warm hug of their parents who are living on the edge. In the tired faces of the uprooted thousands, I search for my father. 8220;We are surrounded by water, beta,8221; he told me on a shaking Wireless in Local Loop WLL phone.

Seated in the city of gold, I pretend to be concerned. Like the hypocrites with whom I mingle every day, I sympathise with the lot of my folks.

Sorry dad, I am being bitingly honest.