The First Flood

Another chapter from my aunt's childhood

Every year many villages of Assam, India have to face the havoc caused by flood. It kills scores of people and leaves several hundred homeless.

It was somewhere in the monsoon of 1944 when my aunt was only 3 years old, grandpa was posted in Dhakuwakhana ( it's a place in the Lakhimpur of Assam)

I sometimes wonder how my aunt remembers everything so vividly as if things are happening in front of her eyes.

One day early in the morning she woke up by a few sharp knocks at the front door. Grandpa opened the door and to his amazement found the headmaster of the local school standing there along  with two students. They were in a hurry, there was tension rit large on their face and as they came running they were gasping for breath.

The headmaster told grandpa that river Brahmaputra was rushing so fiercely in high speed that they could even hear the sound of it. He alerted them of flood and asked grandpa to send grandma, aunt and uncle( elder brother of my aunt and my father) with him, so that he can take them to a safer place i.e the school building which was situated at a bit higher place. And told grandpa to pack every necessary household things and place it somewhere on a safe place with the help of the two students.

Accordingly grandma, aunt and uncle left with him. Grandpa stayed back for a while and with the help of his two students he stacked all the beds and tables one above the other, put all the necessary things above it, locked the house and finally he along with his two students left for the school building.

When they finally reached the school building, they saw that a number of families of my grandpa's colleagues have also took shelter there.

This was the first experience of flood in her life. But my aunt was too young to understand the consequences of flood at that time, instead she was very happy to meet the other children of her age and in no time she made a lots of friends and they were running and playing everywhere.

The flood waters inundated almost whole of Dhokuwakhana, there was flood water all around the school. On the second day of their stay my aunt and my uncle decided to go and have a close look at the flood water and see how does it look like.

As decided they went to the corner of the verandah and started looking at the water, suddenly  something that was floating on the water caught the attention of her eyes, it was very surprising and at the same time confusing for her because what she thought she saw was a number of seaseme seeds laddoo ( indian dessert that looks like small black ball) floating in the water. Out of amazement she asked her elder brother i.e my uncle that why somebody threw those laddoos in the water and can they catch and eat them.

My uncle was a very intelligent little boy and he had a habit of reading books and newspapers from a very tender age. Although he was a six years old boy at that time he knew what exactly those black balls were.

So he explained to her that those black balls were not seaseme seeds laddoo but ants rolled up into balls. And he further explained to her that ants can sense the coming floods and they used to form these ball like structure in order to float in the water and be safe. This is their survival strategy. Ants always do teamwork in an organised and disciplined way.

It made her wonder that how fascinating it is that even such small creatures observe unity and discipline so sincerely.

The floods came and went but she got the lesson of discipline unity and power of organization for the rest of her life.

This is indeed very surprising that how sometimes some important lessons of life can be learnt from such small creatures of earth.