‘We are eating leaves’: Assam floods make boy spend night on tree, others on rooftops

GUWAHATI: From a schoolboy clinging to a tree with his mother through the night in his flooded school campus at Nazira to countless families taking refuge on rooftops, the devastating floods sweeping through Assam’s Sivasagar and Charaideo districts have left behind scenes of unprecedented destruction.Triggered by torrential runoff from the hills of neighbouring Nagaland, the deluge has marooned thousands and cut off entire villages. But a viral video of the boy, filmed at Hulang Katoni village about 4 km from Nazira town, has come to symbolise the scale of the disaster.“Hey people, we have not eaten anything but are eating leaves,” the minor boy, whose identity is yet to be established, says in the video while holding a leaf he claims he is about to eat.His mother and several other family members are also seen perched on the same tree, saying they spent the entire night there.