"Take me back, I want to go back..."
This was how some survivors of the massive Uttarakhand floods cried in an emotional outburst when they returned today with some member or other of their family or assorted group of pilgrims and tourists not among their midst after going through a harrowing five-day ordeal.
As a rescue helicopter touched down this helipad in Uttarakhand capital on a sombre, cloudy day in the hills, out stepped a group of five adults and three children.
Among them, a man in his late thirties.
His face heavy with sorrow he bursts out crying the moment he disembarks. What was surely a moment of joy for a survivor was starkly not so.
"Take me back, I want to go back... My two children, my wife Rita, my parents are still stranded there with seven others." That is all Amit Pande of Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh could say before being choked by a fresh spasm of tears.
That is the situation of countless survivors who have been trickling into Dehradun; many have still to locate their kin and friends with whom they had embarked on a trip to the hills.
Everybody has horrifying stories to tell and it is not just the survivors.
For instance, Mansi from Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur. She had come to Sahasradhara accompanied by a family member and two photographs of her sister, brother-in-law and their son posing together. All three are missing.
She had last spoken to her sister on Tuesday when the latter managed to call on her way down from Kedarnath, the epicentre of the massive floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains.
"They said they have climbed down 4-km on foot, but rescue teams were yet to reach them. They have no food, no water. They mentioned seeing bodies lying around the temple area.
"Please find them and rescue them," she could not fight back the tears as she requested a police officer to help her. "I don't have any other siblings. She is my only sister," she pleaded.
