Bechan with his only surviving cow at the relief camp. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Janki Nagar, Sept. 4: Bechan Paswan ran for his life, but he had to let go of his livelihood.

The 30-year-old cowherd from Kolhaipatti in Madhepura, the district worst affected by the Bihar floods, could not save four of his five cows as he scrambled to reach a relief camp.

Bechan had been asleep in his hut on the night of August 19 when he heard his neighbour calling out to him. “Bhaago, paani garajte huye aa raha hai (Run, the water is coming in torrents),” he screamed as he banged the door.

Jolted awake, Bechan heard the roar of the river. The sound came from the southern part of his village.

He hurriedly untied his five cows and ran northwards with the Kosi in hot pursuit.

But the river beat Bechan in no time, catching him midway and drowning four of the animals.

The cowherd made it to the Janki Nagar relief camp, 15km from his village, in neighbouring Purnea district. But once he reached there, he realised he had left behind his mother, Kusma Devi, 72, and 10-year-old daughter Guddi. He hasn’t heard of them since.

“Can you find out where my mother and daughter are,” he pleaded to others at the relief camp as he patted his only living cow.

Bihar’s Saharsa and Madhepura districts, famous for parra (sweetened milk), curd, kheer and milk, are home to the cattle-rearing Yadavs. The three Yadav stalwarts — Lalu Prasad, Sharad Yadav and Pappu Yadav — have represented the region in the Lok Sabha.

Asked how many cattle have died in the floods, the state’s disaster management secretary, Amrit Pratyay, said: “So far, 10 lakh cattle have been affected. I cannot give you the exact number of dead cattle as we have not counted them.”

The statistics don’t say it, but Saharsa and Madhepura have virtually lost their identity as Bihar’s “most cattle-rich region”.

Few cattle can be seen at the relief camps, each housing 3,000 to 4,000 people, on the Maheskhoont-Saharsa-Madhepura and Banmankhi-Medhepura highways.

The rest seem to have vanished in the vast expanse of the water. So have the shops selling parra, curd and kheer, which earlier dotted the highways.

Binod Kumar Yadav, 25, his father Jabbar Yadav, two brothers and a sister had fled home holding on to the tails of their two buffaloes, worth Rs 12,000, when the water streamed into Raikatola village.

The family found a lifeboat, brought in by the National Disaster Response Force, and jumped in. But it did not have room for their four-footed sources of living.

“We failed to save our buffaloes that were our life. Without our buffaloes, our life has no meaning,” Binod said, tears rolling down his face.

The Nitish Kumar government has announced that it would set up 63 cattle relief camps.

But they won’t be of any use to Chandrakishore Yadav, who has taken shelter at the Janki Nagar camp with his wife and three children.

“There are no cattle with us now who can get a shelter in cattle camps. They all have been swallowed by the Kosi,” said Chandrakishore, once the proud owner of three cows.