Betrawati, August 30
At 8am on August 26, Santaman Lama of Betrawati took his son and daughter to school, as he did every day.
When he returned home, however, something made him stop outside rather than go in.
Lama owned a house in Betrawati, where he ran a shop selling religious items. He had also rented out a room to Ansari Motorcycle Workshop.
As he stood outside, the owner of a nearby hardware shop told him he had heard that a flood was coming to Betrawati.
“I heard that a flood was coming to Betrawati. They told us not to stay here,” the hardware shop owner told him.
Warnings about floods were not unusual for people in Betrawati, and Lama initially did not take the warning too seriously.
But the words—“they told us not to stay here”—stayed with him.
He repeated the warning to himself before calling his wife outside and telling her what he had heard.
“The hardware shop owner told us to go uphill and said he would go and check the river,” Lama recalls.
“I had barely told him, ‘Don’t go,’ when the river came. It hit us,” he says. “The first surge knocked him down and swept him away.”
What happened next remains vivid for Lama.
“My wife was behind me. I grabbed her first, but the river threw her away. Somehow, I lifted her and threw her uphill. Then I held on to some bushes and climbed up,” he says.
By then, the flood had reached his house. From higher ground, Lama watched as the water swept it away.
“I saw my neighbours lose not only their houses but also their family members. It was heartbreaking,” he says.
Ishwarlal Shrestha and Buddhilal Dangol were swept towards him, and Lama managed to pull both of them to safety.
“After that, I lost contact with them,” he says. “If I meet them, I want to tell them: it wasn’t only your everything that was lost. I lost everything too.”
Lama also saw two people calling for help from a rooftop but was unable to reach them.
Once he made it to higher ground, his thoughts turned to his children.
He borrowed a neighbour’s phone and immediately contacted their school. His son and daughter were safe at Nilkantha School, which is located on higher ground.
“I managed to save my family of four,” he says.
No home, and Rs 2.3 million in debt
Lama survived, as did his immediate family. But almost everything else he owned was lost in the flood.
The only house he owned was swept away. He now has to ask relatives staying in upper Keraghari for clothes to wear.
Wearing a torn shirt, Lama says he is struggling to understand what comes next.
“I have nothing to eat or nowhere to stay. I have been reduced to asking others for things. That was everything I had,” he says, visibly emotional. “It was property I had worked hard to build.”
The house was not only his home but also an investment he had built through years of work. Lama says he is now carrying a debt of Rs 2.3 million that he took to build it.
He has not been able to repay the loan, and the debt, along with concerns about his children’s future, weighs heavily on him.
“How am I supposed to repay the loan now? The bank does not understand my pain,” he says.
“If the government understands the situation of people like me who have lost everything and provides some relief, perhaps we can continue living. Otherwise, we may be forced to leave this world before our time.”
For now, Lama has one request.
“If you can, please take my story to the government,” he says.
