The whole city is submerged due to flood; people are running for their lives; there is chaos everywhere; people are crying for help, innocent children, old and young are floating on water; a 22 year old young man runs to save his drowning mother, when suddenly he hears the cries of his wife from the other side, then he thinks of his missing daughter. At that moment he sees the waving hand of his mother over the water who is saying good bye to him. Next he sees his wife getting washed away by the furious waves. The heartrending scene leaves him unconscious. When he regains his conscious he finds himself sitting on the branch of a tamarind tree with 149 other people.
The young man was none other than the famous poet Amjad Hyderabadi who was one of the 150 people who saved their lives by hanging on to the branches of the tamarind tree. Amjad Hyderabadi who saw his entire family including his mother Mrs. Sofia Begum, wife Mahboob Unnisa and daughter Azam Unnisa and other family members getting washed away in the flooded Musi was the sole survivor of his family. Later he wrote a poem ‘Qayamat-e-Soghra’ detailing his personal tragedy.
Hyderabad will observe the 104th anniversary of the ‘Great Musi floods’ on September 28, which had killed thousands of people and wiped out a large part of the city in September 1908. The city will surely pay rich tributes to the tamarind tree, which had saved 150 lives which stand in the premises of Osmania hospital.
Special report