Vijayawada floods: surviving the wrath of ‘sorrow’ Premium

Desperate flood victims in Vijayawada await aid as chaos and devastation grip the city, leaving many helpless and stranded.

Hari Priya, in her night dress, anxiously sobs in silence as she sits with her toddler in her arms on the footpath of a flyover overrun by a crowd, chaos, and despair. With her phone running out of battery, she waits there helpless in the hope of finding her husband and elder daughter, who got separated in the swarm of flood victims that thronged the place to grab water food packets being distributed at a truck.

On seeing her, Nagesh, who was carrying a sackful of buttermilk packets, stops to give her a few packets. He says his family and neighbours in Ajith Singh Nagar could not come out as the roads were inundated by the flood water. “I am taking the buttermilk to give it to whoever needs it in my colony,” he says

September 2 was just another Monday for most people in Vijayawada, the capital region of Andhra Pradesh. The markets bustled as people who had been cooped inside their houses for two days due to heavy rain that lashed the city on Friday and Saturday came to buy essentials. Most parts of the city were getting back to normal.

Only 7 km away, the situation was anything but normal. From 7.30 a.m. onwards, hundreds gathered around a truck, where food, milk and water were distributed for free, on the Ajith Singh Nagar flyover that connected the submerged colonies to the other parts of the city. Most of them had nothing to eat or drink for the past 24 hours.

“I tried to get a food packet but in vain. The men who stood at the front managed to grab every food packet thrown at us by a volunteer from the truck; I could only get my hands on just two packets of buttermilk,” says Hari Priya, a daily wager, sweating despite the cold weather.

Carrying a toddler in one hand and a stick in another, she waded through more than waist-deep water to reach the flyover from her house in Ajith Singh Nagar, which was inundated. “There is no food at home for the children and no drinking water. When we learned that food was being distributed here, we had to dare to step out,” she says.

“We do not have any cash or jewellery with us. We are only worried about lives,” says Hari Priya who lives in a small rented room with nothing but a cot and cooking essentials.