Woman saves duo with sari

TT, Alipurduar, Aug. 14: A housewife saved a man and his nine-year-old son from drowning in the swollen Kaljani river by jumping into the water and tying the sari she was wearing around the father’s waist.

On Sunday, Shyama Roy, a resident of Dwip Char in Alipurduar town, saw a boy in the middle of the Kaljani river.

“I saw a small boy in the river crying for help. I thought he would drown anytime and raised the alarm. I got out of my house and started running along the riverbank crying for help,” said the 39-year-old woman.

“Suddenly I saw the boy moving ahead faster with the flow. I did not waste time and jumped into the water. After swimming for some distance, a managed to get hold of the boy. Then I took off the cotton sari I was wearing and tied it around the waist of the boy’s father, who I thought had lost consciousness. Seeing me, my brother Babul Sarkar had also jumped into the river,” Shyama said. She asked Babul to take the boy to safety.

“Later Babul came back along with some local people to rescue the father.”

After some time the father and the son were taken to their house at Shantinagar near here.

Arkabarna said his father Debobrata Sarkar had been teaching him swimming and like every Sunday they had gone to the Kaljani river around noon.

On reaching the river Sarkar made the boy climb on his back so that they could go to the other side of the river where it was less deep. But when they reached the middle of the swollen Kaljani, Sarkar found the water level too high.

“Like every Sunday, I took my son for swimming and I asked him to hold on to me tight and not to let go. When we reached the middle of the river, I saw the water was very deep. I got worried and decided to return. As we started coming back, the water level rose suddenly and I lost balance. Before I could understand anything, I began moving ahead with the current. I kept telling my son not to leave me but I realised I was drowning. I started crying for help and I don’t remember anything after that,” said Sarkar, a whole sale trader of sanitary items and water tanks.

The current had taken the duo almost half-a-kilometre away from where they were.

While Sarkar had almost drowned, Arkabarna, whose head was above the water, kept crying for help.

“I thought both of us would die. I started shouting and suddenly a woman grabbed me. She tied her sari around my father’s waist. She and her brother brought us to safety. Father had lost consciousness. We revived him somehow and took him home,” said Arkabarna, a Class IV student.

“I will remember this incident all my life. I am alive only because of the lady,” said 34-year-old Sarkar.