Flood! The flood has cut us off—severed and alone.
My village people, drowning, sink beneath the stone.
The embankment breaks and splits the world in two,
And all our dreams lie drowned beneath the waters too.
On every side, on every hand, only water spread—
Who will paint these blinded eyes with colours that have fled?
Who will bring back life again and tint these eyes once more
With hues of hope that vanished on this devastated shore?
House and land and homestead—all are swept away.
In endless dark no night can pass, no dawn can find the day.
No electric light, no kerosene to burn,
Only in two houses does a candle yearn—
Its flickering flame so faint, so thin, so frail,
The only light that lingers in this valley of travail.
Nothing left to eat, nowhere left to rest,
Government tarpaulins and dry food at best—
How can these ever fill a hungry, hollow breast?
Children wail in anguish, the elders weep and cry,
What words can speak of Assam\'s flood, of how her people die?
It comes with every year, and every year it goes,
Yet no one takes it seriously—no one cares, no one knows.
No proclamation from the state, no word from the Centre\'s throne,
No earnest vow, no solemn pledge, no seed of hope is sown.
The dredging of the Brahmaputra halts and stops midway,
And only in the flood do I cry out and say—
O my ever-beloved mother, hear your children\'s plea!
But deeper still the wound that bleeds, the truth we dare not name—
Upon the sacred hills, they carve their fortune and their fame.
Illegal coal mines gouge the mountains, rip the ancient stone,
While leaders feast and mafias reap, the hills are left alone.
They strip the forests, blast the slopes, and bleed the earth of ore,
Then wash their hands as waters rise and claim the helpless poor.
The rains that once were seasons—gentle, timely, kind—
Now fall as weapons, merciless, with fury unconfined.
The hills, once sponges holding life, now bare and wounded stand—
No roots to drink, no soil to hold, no mercy in the land.
The rivers swell with poison silt and choke the plains below,
And those who dug the mountains\' heart now watch the waters grow.
They call it flood—this man-made death, this greed-made tragedy—
While coal-stained hands count profits in the halls of luxury.
The mafias and the ministers, in shadows, share their prize,
And in the light of day, they wear their suits and tell their lies.
The hills are bleeding, rivers weeping, villages erased—
Yet not a single powerful head is ever held disgraced.
Gazing at the broken ruins of the embankment wall,
While speculation rises and the idle theories fall,
The government\'s five long years slip by—
And still the people drown, and still they cry.
In the name of entertainment and of sport,
A thousand crores are spent—a lavish, thoughtless sort—
In a land that boasts such wealth and such might,
Why can it not ensure a life of safety and of light?
Why is there no modern plan, no strong design,
To guard the lives and livelihoods of those who toil and pine?
When declaring Assam\'s man-devouring flood
A national problem—as it surely should—
Why do I see no goodwill, no grace,
No human warmth upon the central government\'s stony face?
They will not stop the mining, will not seal the gaping wound,
For every stone they pull from earth is coin that must be found.
And so the hills will crumble, and the floods will ever rise,
And the poor will keep on drowning beneath indifferent skies.
But history keeps a ledger, and the earth remembers all—
One day the mountains will reclaim what greed has dared to call its own,
And the flood that washes over them shall answer to their fall.