Well past midnight on 19 July, as floodwaters surged through a village in India's northeastern state of Assam, Bornali Baruah and her husband were trying to save his 97-year-old mother. There was no boat, no rescue team and no neighbour available to help. So they lifted her onto a makeshift raft made of banana trunks, and carried her through the rushing water towards safety. "Everyone was trying to save themselves," Baruah says. The water would eventually rise to about five feet inside it.