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In the morning, before she left for work, Ambika Thankappan called her son, Arun, to tell him their world was about to drown.
“Da, it’s already flooded to the nearby villages,” she told him in a calm voice, using an affectionate Malayalam word for “boy”. “And it’s starting to reach our village.”
“I’ll be there in an hour,” he replied.
I can never forget the 15th of August. We never expected the water to rise this high
Arun jumped on his motorbike and set off through the rain towards their home. But the water was already a foot and a half deep. And it was rising, fast.
On a normal day, Arun would be working in a shop at Cochin International Airport, which serves the city of Kochi, in India’s southwestern coastal state of Kerala. Thankappan would be working at the same airport, collecting trolleys and lining them up for travellers. On a normal day, a man named Wilson Perez would be picking tomatoes in Immokalee, Florida, in the United States, rather than seeking sanctuary in a high school; and in Toronto, Canada, Klever Freire and Gabriel Otrin would be doing something that 81 million people do, every day, without expecting to fight for their lives: riding in a lift.
But August 15, 2018 – India’s Independence Day, as it happens – was not a normal day for Arun and his mother. That morning, after three days of non-stop heavy rain, the water began to rise. And rise.
“I can never forget the 15th of August,” Thankappan says. “We never expected the water to rise this high.” And then she begins to sob.