As rescuers continue searching for Australians missing after the Nepal-Tibet floods, Sarada Viswanathan has one message. Keep looking.
Sydney medical student Sarada Viswanathan is clinging to hope that her missing partner and his family will be found alive after the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster.
She has been buoyed by the news that another Australian reported missing after the flood has been found alive, offering a fresh glimmer of hope to families still waiting for news of the 35 Australians who remain unaccounted for.
The Australian, who was not believed to have been in the disaster zone, contacted authorities to confirm they were safe and well, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
Eight Australians missing since the 26 August disaster have now been located.
Of the 35 Australians still unaccounted for, 34 had been on the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage, including Sarada’s partner Rishab Iyer, his brother Rudhra and their parents Sreedharan and Lakshimi.
Sarada and the brothers are all medical students. She said each story of survival was a reason to keep believing.
“Look, I truly believe he is somewhere safe. But I have prepared myself for the worst,” she told The Medical Republic.
“I obviously have moments during the day where I think, ‘Oh God, maybe he’s already gone. But, the times I start thinking that, I just tell myself, if I start giving up here, how on earth is he meant to not give up over there?”
Sarada said a particularly important source of hope was that a phone belonging to another member of the travelling group had registered a signal after the disaster.
“That phone ping came from another lady in the group, the day after the event,” she said.
“So obviously her phone has survived, which would mean that she would have survived.
“They were all in one group together, and I know those like they’re very close. They will not leave one person behind.”
In a harrowing twist of fate, Sarada revealed she had also originally planned to make the pilgrimage with her family, while Rishab himself had at one stage not been expected to go.
“So, my family was also going to go, but a few families backed out,” she told TMR.
She said Rishab and his family had been training for the trek for a while, even taking 15km hikes every weekend. Sarada said she ultimately decided she was not physically prepared for the trek.
“They are pretty fit, and I was not. I get puffed out climbing up the stairs. I was like, ‘maybe this is not for me, maybe I shouldn’t be doing this’,” she said.
The decision has left her with conflicting emotions now that Rishab and his family are missing.
“I’m obviously glad I didn’t go, but another part of me is like ‘I could I could be with him right now’,” she said.
“But I think that like in terms of search efforts, I feel like I’m doing a bit of stuff from here at least. So it’s not like I’m sitting around doing nothing.”
Rishab’s participation had not been certain either. Sarada said he was initially not meant to make the trip and she had urged him not to go.
“There was a bit of back and forth, and I even told him not to go, but you know they ended up going,” she said.
But she said there was some comfort in knowing Rishab was with his much-loved parents and brother.
“I think that, like, at least as a family, they will like feel comfort with each other,” Sarada said.
Sarada said DFAT had been “very good in reaching out to us”, contacting the family members in Sydney every few days and when requested.
“But unfortunately, the thing is that they don’t have much information to provide,” she said
“It’s not that they’re keeping anything from us, [I] just don’t think that there is much information because we haven’t heard anything about them.”
Rishab is due to finish his fifth year at medical school before graduating in December, Sarada said. He was set to begin his internship at Gosford and hoped to pursue anaesthetics.
She believes that if he is alive, his medical training will be helping those around him.
The couple have been together for three years but have known each other for 11, having grown up together.
“He’s genuinely like the most like caring and funny and nice person that I’ll ever know. He always puts more for other people than he does for himself,” Sarada said.
“I really hope that he’s sitting there somewhere and knows how much he means to everyone, and that’s what’s keeping him going right now because I firmly believe he’s out there somewhere and he’s safe, but they’re just stranded.”
Their final conversation was unremarkable, apart from Rishab mentioning landslides and patchy connectivity.
“The last thing he said was that he can’t wait to talk to me later,” Sarada told TMR.
“I’m just waiting for that later.”
With rescuers still finding survivors more than a week after the disaster, the medical student said her fear was that the search would end before every possibility had been exhausted.
“Obviously, the biggest fear is that you know they’re gone. But I guess second to that, the biggest fear is that people will forget about them and it’ll just die down, and people will start stop search efforts, thinking that there’s no there’s no point,” she said.
“But I think that until anything is confirmed, the search efforts should continue.”
Her message to Australian authorities and the public is simple.
“The main thing that we need is just for the government to continue their search efforts and not give up,” she said.
“We just really want everyone to just remain hopeful and just don’t give up on them.”
