In the early hours of Monday, after it poured more than 700 mm in 36 hours, villagers of Sar Ka Par here decided to abandon their homes for a safe place.

Just as they were fleeing the village, a priest from the local temple exhorted them to take shelter in the temple instead as the shrine was blessed. While most of the villagers fled, nearly 40 people decided to stay back. In two hours flat, say eyewitnesses, all of them, including the priest, were swept away. Today, the entire village is submerged in more than 10 feet of water, with not a trace of the temple.

“Ram bhi hum se rooth gaya hai (even god has turned his back on us),” says Shahid Bhai, one of the villagers who ignored the priest’s pleas and scampered to a nearby hill. They were rescued by the army 36 hours later after one of them managed to make a call from his cell phone.

The pessimism is justified. For, almost everything that the people of Thar depended on for their survival has turned against them. Even the sand dunes, the desert’s symbol of beauty and resistance, have wreaked havoc. Under the force of a 30-feet high wall of water that swept across the desert after it rained non-stop, many dunes have shifted, leaving behind craters in the ground.

“Some of these dunes have occupied the low-lying areas in the desert. We fear that dozens of people may be trapped under them,” says Bhanwar Lal Chaudhary, whose NGO Lok Kalyan Parishad is running relief camps in the affected areas.

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