IT had been three days since Gokul Bairagi and his fellow villagers had been marooned without food or water on a mound of dry land at Khanakul, less than 100 km from Calcutta. Then Bairagi heard a chopper over their mound. He started running, for food had finally arrived. But Bairagi died on dry land: he was crushed by jaggery sacks air-dropped by the chopper. "Death stares at you from every direction," says Tapan Chanda, a Khanakul villager. "You might get drowned, electrocuted or get flattened by relief."