Pregnant mother who braved river’s fury is now a happy mom

Mathematics teacher braves the elements, and is now a proud mother

August 18, 2019 09:37 am | Updated 09:37 am IST - Mangaluru

Divya Shivakumar crossed the Mrutyunjaya thanks to the National Disaster Response Force.

Divya Shivakumar crossed the Mrutyunjaya thanks to the National Disaster Response Force.

It was in an act of bravery that a nine-month pregnant mathematics teacher in Belthangady taluk was rescued from a village cut off by the raging waters of Mrutyunjaya river in the Charmadi gram panchayat limits. Helped by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Divya Shivakumar crossed the gushing waters with the help of a rope. Now, in a happy ending, she has given birth to a healthy baby, and the parents want to name him “Virat” — which brings to mind both the human acts of bravery and the magnitude of the nature’s fury, which the mother and child survived. The family of Ms. Divya was planning to shift her to the mainland, which has a hospital, from Puthila village when, all of a sudden, heavy rains and flash floods struck. A portion of the approach road to the bridge at Parlani (close to Puthila) in Belthangady taluk of Dakshina Kannada was washed away in the floods that devastated the villages on August 9.

Several villages at the foothills of the Western Ghats were cut off.

They were hemmed in between the raging waters of the Mrutyunjaya on the one side and the dense forests of the Western Ghats on the other. In fact, rains and river water had brought down big trees and boulders from the Western Ghats on to the roads, wrecking them.

Relief came the next day in the form of NDRF personnel and others, who established a link from one side of the river to the other by tying a makeshift rope. Ms. Divya, who taught at St. Thomas High School, Neriya, till a year ago, was finally shifted from Puthila to the mainland with only the seat belt tied to the rope.

Her husband, Shivakumar, a lecturer at Anugraha Pre-University College, Ujire, told The Hindu that Ms. Divya was delivered of a boy at K.S. Hegde Hospital, Deralakatte, near Mangaluru, on August 14. The couple have two daughters – Vamshi, 9, and Vruddhi, 4. “The NDRF and local people were really a godsend,” Mr. Shivakumar said. The lecturer said that the family’s arecanut plantation, near the river, is now filled with at least four ft. sludge. The same is the case with several arecanut growers in villages in the panchayat.

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