Dr Suman Bhatia was home when the phone rang early in the morning. It was a call from a US hospital, with a message that shook the Jaipur lecturer’s world.
Her son, Nikhil, who studied in the US, was in the hospital, she was told.
He had been rescued from a lake hit by Hurricane Harvey in Texas on Saturday but was in a critical condition.
Dr Bhatia left for the US as soon as she could. “But he did not survive,” Nikhil’s cousin, Kushal Bhatia, said.
As the news of his death spread, gloom shrouded their house in the Mansarovar area, where the senior lecturer in a city government-run college lived alone. Nikhil’s father, Pradeep Bhatia, is a defence personnel currently based in Udaipur.
A student at the Texas A&M University, Nikhil was rescued on Saturday from Lake Bryan, where he had gone for a swim with a 25-year old Indian woman, Shalini Singh.
The hurricane caused the water to swell, almost drowning the two. They were taken to a hospital. Nikhil did not survive, while Singh is still critical.
Kushal described his cousin as “a topper with a brilliant mind and a noble personality”.
“No one ever imagined that Nikhil, who was riding high on success, would meet such an abrupt end,” he said.
Nikhil, who completed his schooling from Jaipur’s St. Anslems Pink City Senior Secondary School in 2011 and did his B.Tech in Vellore, had recently graduated from Texas A&M University in Water Management and Hydrological Science.
Kushal said the family was making all efforts to bring the body back to India at the earliest.
