The only way to reach villages across the swift Suran river is by using ropes.
The only way to reach villages across the swift Suran river, still in spate, is by using ropes. The current is strong, although the water has begun to recede. The Army has been helping the people - who had pulled out four days days ago -across all day. They are going back home on the other side after days.
Five days of incessant rain last week made the Suran change its course, cutting off an entire village in Surankote from both sides.
Bela, Potha and Sanai villages had overnight become an island which Suran River was threatening to gobble up. The fate of over 400 people in these villages was grim.
"We tried for three days but couldn't cross, big tree trunks were being tossed about like match sticks so strong was the torrent," said Colonel GS Bhuller, the deputy commandant of 6 sector of Romeo Force, recalling the first few days of floods. On the fourth day, as intensity of the rains reduced, Colonel Bhuller and his men took boats, set up rope lines and pulled all the villagers over the next seven hours.
What were green paddy fields earlier are now a fast flowing river. As people are helped by Army jawans to cross, they inspect the damage done by what the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has called the worst floods in a century.
Mohammad Kursheed has returned to a broken-down home in Bela village. He says he had over 42000 square feet of paddy fields, every bit of which has been devoured by the river. "I have nowhere to stay, no land and I cannot rebuild the house," he says.
No house in the village is habitable anymore. A woman with a toddler on her lap sits stunned next to what was home. "I have nothing to wear anymore," she says.
A little distance away, another family comes to terms with what is left of their house. Jamela Begum says, "My husband is in Srinagar and I haven't heard from him in 10 days... As long as the relief camp is on we have a roof over our head, but I don't know what will happen thereafter.
Two young boys who just made the perilous journey across the river, learn that the ground where they played cricket till last week, does not exist anymore. Home is a house now half washed away. "We are now living in a tent ...my exams are 12 days away ... I don't have any books," Shakil Ahmed says.
His neighbours frantically try to salvage what they can to carry back to the relief camp - school across the river.
Bela village will take a long time to build again. As will thousands of other villages, still cut off. The only way to reach them is through these streams that have come up almost overnight. Holding a rope and a soldier's hand.