A 10-year-old Viraal dreams of becoming an engineer. But as the roof leaks and his house stands submerged, hopelessness strikes. He fights back his tears and gets up to build his future.
The heart-breaking story comes from Navsari in Gujarat. Between Friday and Saturday, the district has recorded over 400 mm rainfall in 24 hours, in what was a second spell of showers within a week.
The floods have submerged hundreds of houses and displaced thousands, besides throwing into uncertainty the future of several children whose aim now is to help their families rebuild their lives from scratch.
But dreams still live on. To find one such ray of hope, an NDTV team waded through the waters to meet Viraal and his sister Dipisha. Their house was entirely submerged. The door was broken. The beds too. His room doubles up as the kitchen since there’s no other space for their mother to cook.
Standing in waist-deep water, Viraal broke down as he spoke about daily struggles in the waterlogged area. He shared how every necessity has turned into a struggle after weeks of flooding, be it for food or water.
His family now has no access to clean drinking water, and his sister must walk a long distance to fetch it.
“Life is very difficult here. It’s all submerged. I pray to God that he doesn’t let this happen again,” he says.
But medals overlooking from the walls had another tale to tell.
Viraal aspires to pursue engineering. No matter how big the challenges, he refuses to give up. He’s convinced that his dreams are bigger. Fighting back his tears, he says he wants to become an engineer to support his mother.
The medals on his wall are a reminder of those ambitions that he refused to let go. But he has one appeal to the authorities: “Ghar bana dena.”
Diamond City Flooded
Not far away from Navsari lies the diamond hub of India, Surat, equally ravaged by the floods. At least 300 factories have been inundated in the Shantadevi area, with water levels reaching nearly five feet.
The biggest damage has been to the machinery. Production has halted. Thousands of diamond artisans have remained without work for the past 10 days. With the industry facing a slowdown, these workers had already been getting only four days’ work a week. The rains brought a double whammy.
The flood has further deepened the livelihood crisis for diamond workers, with at least 10,000 of them being directly affected. The financial losses are expected to run into several crores due to damage to machinery, disrupted production, and lack of employment.
