'It's natural for us': Main road cut, villagers form man-bridge for kids in flooded Punjab village; watch

BATHINDA: A flashflood having swept away the main road, residents of a village in Punjab's Moga district turned into a human bridge to help stranded school children cross the raging waters on Wednesday.In surging, waist-deep water, two men leaned over to span the breach and let the kids walk on their backs to safety in Malleana village, around 160km west of Chandigarh.A video of this was soon racking up views on social media, and the two men were surprised to know they had become internet celebrities. "We are village people. It's natural for us. It's just that someone took a video and it reached outside," said Sukhwinder, when TOI reached out to him.Due to heavy rain, rivers and canals are overflowing in some parts of Punjab. The road that was there when children from Malleana village boarded their schoolbus on Wednesday morning had disappeared when they returned in the afternoon. The main link between Malleana and Rasoolpur villages (45km apart) in Nihal Singh Wala subdivision was cut by raging floodwaters.Vehicles and people stood on either side unable to ford the 8-ft breach. So did the schoolbus carrying Malleana kids.Sukhwinder was in a group of people trying to plug the breach, but with the fields flooded on either side and more floodwater surging in, it was proving impossible.On seeing the homebound kids stranded on one side, Sukhwinder and another man immediately formed a human bridge while two men on either side helped the kids get on and off it. The school children walked on their backs to the other side, where waiting hands pulled them to safety. Their schoolbags were then passed on by human chain. A visitor, carrying a strolley, also walked on the man bridge.Sukhwinder said, "When we saw that school students and teachers were facing problems, we decided to help them out. Two of us bent down to form a bridge, allowing them to walk on us and across. It's not a big thing, really."