Survivors of Nepal's massive flood are not just grieving individuals; they are grieving the loss of an entire social ecosystem that once made loneliness almost impossible in these tightly-knit hill communities. For Nepalis working abroad, the flood has produced a distinct and painful form of solitude: watching the catastrophe unfold on a phone screen.
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee says it was BJP workers who attacked and vandalised the party's Camac Street office. Party MP Mahua Moitra alleged Kolkata Police did not respond to calls for help.
Recovering bodies is only part of the challenge. Post-mortem and legal identification procedures have been completed for 1,113 of the recovered bodies, but only 95 have actually been returned to grieving families. To speed the process, authorities have published details of 911 unidentified bodies on the Nepal Police website.
Air Marshal (retd) Jeetendra Mishra was selected from a shortlist of three candidates prepared out of 5,585 applications that came for the post. His job would be to prevent the kind of financial scandal involving donation boxes at the Ayodhya Ram Mandir.
Swatantra Bharadwaj, a 21-year-old Hindutva influencer, was heard saying in a podcast that he was not arrested despite his murderous attack on CJP protester Nishu Azad’s father. “I was not even jailed. The world should know this. I was out and
about through the night,” he said.
A buffer against fear, and relief from mental burden are among the perceptible and verifiable benefits the chanting of the mahamantra brings. Staunch believers say it works like the wind clears storm clouds, and sunrise dissolves darkness.
The two men were among hundreds of workers who vanished after the glacial collapse wreaked havoc in Nepal along its border with China on August 26. The disaster has so far claimed at least 1,280 lives, with more than 5,500 people still missing.