For 21-year-old Sujal Thapa Chhetri, the first message he wants to send after surviving the devastating flood in Rasuwa is simple: do not build your home near a river.
Sujal is recovering at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, where he has been recounting the terrifying experience that nearly killed him.
Until a few days ago, home was where Sujal returned to rest after a long day.
He would usually finish his duty inside a tunnel at around 2am and return home to sleep. He did the same on the night before the flood.
At around 6am, he briefly woke up. Then he fell asleep again. That was when the river swept him away.
When he opened his eyes, Sujal realised he was not dreaming. He was in the middle of a raging river.
“At that moment, I felt as if sleep had been taken over by death. I thought I was dreaming that the river had swept me away. But when I opened my eyes, I was actually in the middle of the river,” he recalled from his hospital bed.
Water was surging violently around him. The current threw him from one side to another, repeatedly pulling him under before bringing him back to the surface.
He thought his chances of survival were almost gone.
Desperate to save himself, he tried to grab the edge of a field.
“I tried to hold on to the edge of the field. I kept trying to hold on and somehow managed to get out from there,” he said.
What happened next is unclear in his memory.
He does not know whether he lost consciousness or what happened after that. When he regained consciousness, he was somewhere else. Rescuers had taken him to his brother-in-law’s house higher up.
Sand in his ears and stomach
The flood left Sujal with injuries across his body.
He suffered a head injury and multiple wounds. One of his hands is difficult to move. Sand entered his ears, and the floodwater carried sand deep into his body.
“I vomited yesterday and it was all sand. Sand came out from my mouth and stomach,” he said.
Sujal is now receiving treatment in the red zone at Teaching Hospital.
His physical injuries may heal with time. The wounds in his mind, however, are harder to treat.
He survived. He does not know where his family is.
Asked whether he thought he would survive, Sujal shook off the question.
“I didn’t think I would. I thought I had died. I don’t know how I was lucky enough to survive,” he said.
For those few minutes, his life hung between survival and death. His desperate attempt to grab the edge of the field gave him a chance to reach safety.
But the news he received after regaining consciousness brought little relief.
He was alive. He did not know where his family was.
His father had been away in Gosainkunda when the flood struck. But Sujal has no answers about his mother, his brothers, his grandmother or his uncle.
“They say my grandmother was swept away. They say my two brothers were swept away. They say my elder uncle was swept away. They say my mother was swept away. I only just managed to survive,” he said.
His body is being treated in hospital, but his thoughts remain in his village.
When he thinks about what may have happened there, fear overwhelms him.
His own house has also been swept away.
It was a block-built house with a corrugated metal roof. Now, he says, there is no trace of it.
Sujal does not even have his mobile phone anymore. He has no clothes of his own and no phone numbers with which to contact relatives or ask about his family.
Friends have been coming to the hospital after seeing his name on the list of survivors released by the hospital.
‘I have learned my lesson’
After coming back from the brink of death, Sujal wants others to learn from what happened to him.
“People should not build houses on riverbanks or near rivers. Even if it is a small river, even if the river has dried up, even if you think water never comes there, you should not build a house near it,” he said.
“I have learned my lesson. I don’t know by what luck I survived.”
Waiting for news of his family
Sujal remains in hospital, receiving treatment. His physical wounds will gradually heal. But the questions haunting him have no easy answers.
Where is his mother? Where are his two brothers? Where is his grandmother? What happened to his uncle? That uncertainty is now his greatest pain.
His sister, who lives abroad, may or may not have received the full news of what happened. He does not know. He has no phone to call her and no numbers to reach anyone.
There is no home for him to return to either. Still, hope remains.
He hopes that one day he will hear news of the people he loves. Sujal survived death.
But the world he has returned to is no longer the one he left behind.
The flood did not only sweep away his home. It also carried away his family, his sense of security and the ordinary future he once imagined. From his hospital bed, Sujal carries two things with him: disbelief that he survived — and an aching wait for news of his family.
