The Jubilee Government Primary School in Gaibandha Sadar upazila had not held classes for days. Even though this year's south-westerly monsoon was late to arrive in the Indian Subcontinent, it didn't neglect to bring its dark twin, the flood, with it. Heavy rains battered Bangladesh since early July, with the monthly rainfall in Cox's Bazar reaching 585 mm (23.0 in) by July 14. By then, at least 89 people had already died across Bangladesh, China, India, and Nepal. The hardest hit was Nepal, where at least 55 deaths occurred due to floods and landslides, after heavy rains that began July 12.

Even though monsoonal downpours affected Bangladesh in its southern districts first, and most of the early deaths in the country could be attributed to a day of lightning strikes on July 13 that killed mostly rural farmers, it wouldn't be long before what was happening in Nepal and the Seven Sisters, India's 7 north-eastern states, would start having the most telling effect, and that is why our story starts in the northern Bangladeshi district of Gaibandha.

By July 16, at least three million people had been displaced in north and Northeast India, reported the BBC, including almost two million people in the state of Bihar, and more than 1.7 million people in Assam, which borders Bangladesh. Things got really serious after the great Brahmaputra River - which flows down from the Himalayas and empties into the Bay of Bengal having traversed the length of Bangladesh, at least two Indian states (Assam and Arunachal Pradesh) and even a bit of China, including Tibet -overflowed its banks on July 15 and promptly flooded 1,800 villages in Assam. And that was just for starters.

Gaibandha district is located in north‐eastern Bangladesh at the confluence of two major rivers; namely, Tista and Brahmaputra. This geographical location makes the area vulnerable to disasters, especially floods and riverbank erosion. Frequent disasters make life in this area much more difficult than the rest of country, by depriving people of land, employment opportunities and basic service facilities. The width of the River Jamuna, one of the two rivers into which the Brahmaputra branches off in Gaibandha, varies between 3‐18 km along its length. The river flow varies depending on the volume of the water in a given season.

Many poor people live on the char lands, lands created within the course of the river due to continuous siltation along its length and breadth. Hence, these char lands are some of the most isolated and highly vulnerable place of the country to varying flood levels and related migration, according to PLAN Bangladesh, an NGO that works extensively in the relatively poorer northern districts of Bangladesh ("the area that suffers from regular seasonal famine every year often invisible to outsiders"), including Gaibandha. As we entered the last week of July, this same region stood out as the worst-affected so far this year, by the monsoon flooding that is an annual event in the lives of Bangladeshis. And the forecast was that things would only get worse.

Even amongst the heaviest hit districts in the north, that include Kurigram, Jamalpur, Bogra, Sirajganj, Lalmonirhat, Netrokona, Sunamganj, Sylhet, Habiganj, Moulvibazar and Tangail, the situation in Gaibandha has been particularly desperate. People there almost unanimously agree that they are witnessing the worst floods in recent times in their district, as they continue to suffer shortages of food and drinking water. Fresh areas of five upazilas flooded on July 18, following the collapse of an embankment dam near the district town. The district town was inundated when gushing water breached city embankments in 20 places.

The Brahmaputra River was 150cm above the danger level, and the Ghaghot River rose 94cm above the danger level, said Mokhlesur Rahman, Water Development Board executive engineer. About 4 lakh people were waterlogged in the district. The district's rail links to the north, remained suspended for days. At least 94kms of the Gaibandha-Balashi road was flooded.

At least 361 schools across the district shut down and eight went under water. Some of them are being used as shelters but they lack food, drinking water, and sanitation facilities.

The ballad of Hamida Bibi

The Jubilee Government Primary School was one of the schools pressed into emergency service, where around 450 people had taken shelter by Saturday, July 20 as their homes got submerged.

As evening fell that day, Hamida Bibi, an elderly woman of flood-affected Baniyarjan village, appeared at the shelter centre-cum-school and sought shelter in the building which was already overcrowded, leaving hardly any room for newcomers.

The people who were already there had their minds made up: room after room, they refused to welcome her, citing lack of space. No, not even for just one more frail, old woman who had just lost everything.

In the last classroom-cum-bunker that she tried, a strapping youth named Shumon turned her away saying ''a total of 46 people of 15 families are staying in this room. Where will you stay?''

That was the last straw for Hamida. Spent, she became speechless as she collapsed outside the room, with nowhere else to go. And that is where she would spend the entire night, hoping against hope that they would take her in. That of course wasn't to be.

And so it was also where journalists visiting the facility the next morning would find her, slumped out of weakness and fear, almost abandoned.

''Please bury me in a grave. They did not provide me a little space to sleep, though lots of people taken shelter there. I spent the whole night sitting in front of the door. All the people inside got eggs and rice but I did not get any food. I starved the whole night here,'' she rolled off in a miserable monotone.

''It seems that torture in hell is better than my current situation,'' she continued to admonish. And yet there she was, living and breathing and feeling, surviving. Even as she looked like death, Hamida embodied our instinct for survival. Her whole life had been a story of fighting for survival.

Mokles Miya, the husband with whom she had four children, died during the Liberation War. Like so many of the war widows, the end of the war in 1971 was only the beginning of a new war for them - this one, to raise her children in a fledgling new state where everything was asunder, and to do so without a man by her side. Like so many of those mothers, Hamida took stock and she got on with the job, for the sake of her children. Because that's what mothers do.

Till the floods came along this year, she had been leading a happy-enough life with her sons and their families, all three pulling vans to deliver goods for a living. The daughter was married off to a family in nearby Nuniyagari.On their plot of land, Hamida herself was rearing a good number of cattle. If not opulence, she did have something resembling contentment.

But that all came to an end came this summer, as the Alai River - to add to the Teesta, Brahmaputra - kept rising, exceeding the danger mark at one point, then another, till all along and Gaibandha slowly started going under water. The overflowing waters started inundating Gaibandha municipality area. In course of time, vast areas of the district were submerged in water.

At one stage, on July 12, when the rains got really heavy, the sons along with their wives were forced to move out, leaving the vans as they went under water. From then onwards, her vigil was a lonely one.

By Friday July 19, even her neighbours were all gone, and large parts of Gaibandha were marooned off by flood waters. Hamida knew she had little time, and although she would have preferred to guard her sons' vans, the chest-deep water forced her hand on Saturday. How she made it to the shelter is a mystery itself.

Aiyub Ali, a volunteer with the shelter center, said about 450 people had taken refuge in the school building. Even the roof and staircases of the building are filled out with people who had lost most earthly belongings.

They were only surviving. And that is all they have to go on, to hope to build another day.

Coping with the deluge

By July 23, floodwaters had started to recede from the Brahmaputra and Ghagat Rivers in Gaibandha, but still the situation worsened due to an acute shortage of pure drinking water and improper sanitation.

According to District Relief and Rehabilitation Office (DRRO) in Gaibandha, almost 5.5 lakh people remained stuck in their marooned homes. Some 75,000 took shelter in 184 government shelters. Additionally, almost 600 kilometres of roads are underwater, 63 kilometres of embankments are broken, 12,000 hectares of crop fields are underwater, and 7000 ponds had lost their fish in the flood.

The forecast as Dhaka Courier went to press this week, was that the flood situation in the country's northern and north-eastern regions is likely to deteriorate further in the next 24-48 hours amid swelling of water in Teesta, Dharala, Kushiara and Surma rivers. In the preceding 24 hours, even though the waters of some major rivers had receded, condition of the flood-affected people had changed little amid waterlogging, as well as scarcity of food for both human beings and animals in Kurigram, Gaibandha, Bogura, Sirajganj, Tangail, Jamalpur, Netrakona, Sunamganj and Sylhet districts.

Moderate to heavy spells of rain were forecast in the country's northern regions and in their adjacent Indian states like Assam, West Bengal and Meghalaya, which might further cause continued heavy onrush of water from the upstream. Water level in the rivers around the capital continued to surge, triggering further flooding in many parts of Dhaka district, according to the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC).

It said Brahmaputra River might remain steady. The water level of Ganges-Padma river might continue falling, while that of Surma-Kushiara could rise in 24 hours. Teesta River at Dalia point and Dharala River at Kurigram point might rise abruptly and exceed danger level, according to FFWC. Two major river systems in the North (Jamuna and Tista) had reached their highest water level compared to their previous records (over last 100 years) as per FFWC.

According to FFWC, water level in Brahmaputra-Jamuna river system may fall till 25th July and then slightly rise and become steady. Flood situation is likely to worsen slightly and then gradually become steady in Kurigram, Jamalpur, Gaibandha, Bogura and Tangail during next 5 days from July 22. At least 7 more days of flooding is expected in these districts.

A total of 78 people have died so far in the ongoing flood, of whom eight people were killed by snakebite and seventy by drowning, according to the Health Emergency Operation Center and Control Room (HEOCCR) under the Directorate General of Health. The Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief reports that 2.3 million people have been affected in 20 of Bangladesh's 64 districts.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), in an update on Bangladesh, said 4 million people are at risk of food insecurity and ailments as floods and landslides continued. It also reported that more than 66,000 homes have been already destroyed.

"The communities are reeling under the full force of the monsoon rains and the ensuing floods and landslides. Even if the rains recede, overflowing rivers upstream will worsen the flooding in the lower areas in the coming days," said Azmat Ulla, the head of the Bangladesh Office of the IFRC.

Rising above politics

As the people's sufferings multiplied, the country's political arena was abuzz with the Priya Saha affair that went down in Washington, where the advocate for minority rights managed to snag a personal audience somehow with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, and used the occasion to wildly exaggerate the persecution of minorities that prevails in Bangladesh.

As the Twitterati and social media space exploded in indignation, one party showed the maturity and sense of responsibility to rise above the fray and draw the public's attention to what really mattered for millions of Bangladeshis, as Gonoforum President Dr Kamal Hossain called for holding a national dialogue to find ways to effectively overcome the current flood. Though his statement did go on to critique the government's handling of the situation, he also showed admirable bipartisanship by stating at the outset that "the government cannot alone tackle" the situation.

"We face flood due to our geographical position but we need to find ways to minimise it and save people from sufferings and financial losses. I think a national dialogue is necessary immediately in this regard," he said. Dr Kamal made the call while speaking at a press conference on 'Current Flood Situation' organised by his party at the National Press Club in the city on July 22.

He said both the government and the citizens have a role in tackling the flood situation."I call upon the government: let's sit together and work out action plans to tackle the situation with united efforts."

The Gonoforum chief, however, asserted the government cannot tackle the flood situation involving people as there is no effective democracy in the country. "But we all need to make our efforts to control the flood situation."

Dr Kamal, also the convener of Jatiya Oikyafront, said people should be more active and organised to resolve the country's problem. "There are some issues like flood that should be considered from the national point of view. We should come forward rising above parochial political interest to assuage public sufferings and stand beside flood victims," he added.

Gonoforum executive president Prof Abu Sayeed alleged the government is staging "a farce" in the name of relief distribution among the flood victims. He said a team of his party, led by its presidium member AMSA Amin, is carrying out relief activities in Kurigram where the government could not send relief materials, including food, medicines and pure drinking water, to many remote areas.

"Around 70.8 percent people in Kurigram are living under the poverty line. But the government has allocated just Tk 1.12 and 66 gram rice for each of 1.2 million flood victims in the district over the last one and a half weeks. It's nothing but a farce in the name of relief," the Gonoforum leader said.

Sayeed, also a former Awami League minister, alleged that the government is reluctant about standing beside the flood-hit people with necessary support to assuage their sufferings.

He alleged the flood-affected people are being forced to pay toll to stay on the flood-control embankments while their belongings and cattle are being snatched.

Sayeed also placed his party's six-point demand, including immediately ensuring safety and shelter, adequate food, pure water, medicine and treatment for the flood victims, forming relief committees involving people for ensuring transparency and accountability in relief distribution, taking prompt steps to send relief materials to char and remote areas, and announcing the badly affected areas as disaster-hit.

Additional reporting by A. R. Jahangir