Huge expanses of water. Here and there clusters of half-submerged houses and overflowing rice paddies. Lamp- and electricity-posts protrude above the water, arrayed like helpless sentinels along flooded roads and highways. Cities, towns, cantonments and villages cut off by water. Lakhs of people stranded on rooftops, upper storeys, mounds or knolls—all dependent on defence personnel and relief workers to bring them food and other supplies or to move them to safe ground. Heavy rain over the Sept 5-7 weekend inundated the flat vastnesses along the Jhelum and the Tawi in the region where the two rivers drain into the Dal and Wular lakes. Bridges were swept away, roads subsided or disintegrated under water, landslides and mudflows caused messy and dangerous blockages. Telecom networks broke down, Doordarshan was off air for several hours. Rainfall abated in the new week. Nevertheless, Kashmir Valley is in the throes of a disaster unprecedented and gargantuan, the worst, some say, in 60 years.