Din Muhammad sits atop a shaky charpai balanced on a small dirt mound, watching cars streak by just a few feet away. The M2’s early-morning traffic is light, but it does nothing to distract him or the dozens of families camped along the roadside, clutching children, livestock and whatever possessions they could salvage.
Two nights earlier, officials appeared in his village with evacuation orders. Though some neighbours urged them to stay, government pressure left no choice. They packed only essentials and fled. Now, from the embankment beside Lahore’s Babu Sabu Interchange at Thokar Niaz Baig, nothing breaks the horizon but endless floodwaters.
Amid the watery expanse, half-submerged golden streetlamps and the faded lettering of a “New Metro City Lahore” billboard betray the real estate developments built dangerously close to the Ravi’s banks.
While he talks, Din Muhammad’s gaze remains fixed on the flooded plain. His wife, seated at the foot of the charpai, attends to their children and murmurs her own worry: they’d brought all five of their buffalo when they fled, but one got separated. That healthy animal—vital to the family’s milk supply—has vanished beneath the rising tide.
Their story is far from unique. Over 250,000 people have been uprooted and more than 1.5 million affected by this season’s flooding in central Punjab. And as the swollen Ravi, Chenab and Sutlej rivers surge southward, authorities brace for even greater devastation when they join the Indus in Sindh.
