Vadodara: Two youth from the city, who were stranded in Kerala for five days due to heavy floods, finally reunited with their family on Tuesday.Parikshit Pandya and Bhumik Raj had gone to Kerala for a two-month course in sound engineering earlier this month when they got stuck in an apartment in Aluva town of Ernakulam district.“It was an experience of survival in such difficult situation. We will always remember this experience in our life time,” both Pandya and Raj said.Even when the intensity of rain increased on August 14, the two boys had never imagined that they will be locked up in their apartment for five days without food and electricity. “We were taking it lightly initially hoping that the water will recede within few hours, but as the level increased by every hour we realized that we have been trapped,” said Raj. Pandya added, “Locals had told us that our residential society will not be flooded as it was built on higher plateau, but we were also not spared as the Periyar River was flowing very close to our society.”For five days their schedule was to call all available helpline numbers and flood control room of Kerala state in the morning and wait on the terrace of their building for the remaining part of the day hoping that some helicopter will come and either drop food packets or lift them up.“Only one helicopter arrived in those five days to drop food packets on a building near ours and we were in our house at that time so we could not pass any signal to them,” said Raj.Pandya said that for initial two days they survived on puffed rice that they had carried from home, but after that got over they had nothing left with them. Fortunately they had drinking water with them. By the evening of August 17 both of them had lost all hopes that their efforts will not help them to get out of that situation.However, both of them were rescued by Kerala police on August 18 and shifted to a relief camp.“We are very thankful to the governments of Kerala and Gujarat who listened to our pleas and our sons could finally reach home. Many people in city and my friends in Bengaluru made efforts and I am thankful to all of them,” said Pandya’s father Jaideep.

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