Balasore: A sudden labour pain in a flooded village could send anyone into a tailspin. More so if there are stories of crocodile sightings floating around. But Parshuram Mallick (36) stayed calm, kept his wits about him and did what few would have done — tore down the wooden doorframe of his house and turned it into a makeshift raft to carry his wife to the nearest hospital.But he was not done. Three days later, the family made the return journey home on the same makeshift raft, but now with a new member. Parshuram’s story, one of ingenuity, also exposed the lacuna in the system.On Aug 18, Poojarani Mallick, the 28-year-old wife of Parshuram, went into labour. The nearby Mantei river had breached its banks and flooded Dadhibamanpur village in Bhadrak district. With the village under waist-deep water and crocodiles reportedly roaming around, the family feared for her life and struggled to find a way to reach Basudevpur Community Health Centre (CHC), around 18 km away.With no ambulance or boat available to take Poojarani to the hospital, Parshuram decided to dismantle the wooden door and use it as a raft.He got hold of two long-arm aerator floats made of high-density polyethylene that had been discarded at a nearby prawn farm. He then placed the wooden doorframe over the floating unit and secured the structure with bamboo poles before tying it tightly with rope.The couple, their minor daughter and Poojarani’s mother climbed onto the raft as Parshuram guided the makeshift vessel through the floodwaters to reach a relatively accessible road, from where they arranged transport to the hospital. It took more than three hours to undertake the hour-long journey. Soon after Poojarani was admitted to Basudevpur CHC at around 9.25 pm, she gave birth to a boy.“My wife was in labour and we had no option. We removed the door from the house at night and dragged it through the water. We reached the road and then arranged a vehicle to take her to Basudevpur CHC. We have been living in water for nearly a month. No one comes to our village,” Parshuram said.After spending three days at the hospital, the mother, carrying her newborn, and other family members undertook the same perilous journey to return home.As news spread of the family’s ordeal, additional district magistrate Rabi Narayan Sahu described the incident as unfortunate and said the local administration should have been informed about the pregnant woman so that arrangements could have been made to safely transport her to and from the hospital. “We are trying to ensure that such incidents do not happen in future,” Sahu said.Revenue minister Suresh Pujari also took note of the incident and said the govt had shifted more than 600 pregnant women from flood-prone areas during the recent flooding. He said he would speak to the Bhadrak district collector to ascertain what went wrong in the Basudevpur case. “If there has been administrative or official negligence, action will be taken,” Pujari said.
