My daughter came back from school quite disturbed. “How can India do this to us?” she complained to me as if I was the ‘ambassador at home’ of India. “They have inundated the whole of our country,” she charged angrily.

I tried to explain that the flooding in central and north-eastern Punjab was from the two western rivers, Jhelum and Chenab, and India had nothing to do with them. “It is caused by the torrential rains that flooded all the roads of our city and you see, that’s why you couldn’t go to school for two days,” I reasoned further but she wasn’t satisfied.

“The Indian side of Kashmir is under heavy floods too. It naturally flows our way. It’s geography and nature and not politics, girl,” I was now using my knowledge to buttress my defense.

Also read: Hundreds of thousands marooned by floods in India-held Kashmir

She, however, was not fully convinced.

The floods were obviously discussed by her teachers and classmates that day. “OK, I will soon write to Amir Khan to dissuade his government from throwing away their extra water on us.” I sought some help from the India that she adores.

It ended in laughter but I had to really put in some effort to prove that I was only trying to be rational and not defending India.

I suffered a similar shock some time ago, when I was having a customary welcome-back conversation with my office maid who had just returned from her village in Okara after her Eid visit.

Besides her sick mother, and a vagabond brother refusing ‘a settled life’, she had one additional worry to report, “Agriculture is getting poorer. There is no water in the canals.”

“Where has it gone?” I quipped.