The mid-day cloudburst had opened the parched earth, filling its pores, and quenching its thirst initially with drizzles followed by a heavy downpour—anyways, the earth was muddy and slippery as if adamant upon testing a wanderer with challenges at each step, taking the form of landslides and an early stage of a flood.
The Himantura had swollen like never before. It was overflowing above the mark of danger, flooded by two days of incessant rain. The whole of Swastika was on high alert. Carrying a huge amount of slits and rocks, the river had started destroying wooden huts, shelters at the shore and every other thing that came in its way.
Being a woman of hills, none of it was new for Swamy who had witnessed, if not as disastrous, then nearby same scenario every year for nineteen
