Sunita Thapa and her son Dinesh were at home in Trishuli Bazaar, in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, when the flood struck on August 26. Within moments, the family’s house and shop were gone, swallowed by the current, and so were Sunita and Dinesh. A search began, and three days later, Dinesh’s body was found in the plains of Narayangarh, badly damaged.

“The body was severed. Only the upper part, above the chest, was found. The face and chest were intact, so he could be identified,” says Jeet Bahadur Ranabhat, whose wife Shobha is Sunita’s cousin. Local residents cremated Dinesh on the riverbank. Sunita remains untraced.

Ranabhat’s family lives in Delhi’s Shakarpur – one of many Nepali households scattered across the city now living with a particular kind of anguish. Nepal’s floods, among the worst to hit the country in years, have already killed more than a thousand people and left thousands missing, overwhelming rescue teams and cutting off entire valleys. More than 11,000 people have been rescued from flood-affected areas in Nepal so far, while around 4,000 people were still missing.

For many Nepali families and relatives in Delhi, there........

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