The flood took away her home. Assam's Janmoni returned with gold

On the evening of August 9, 17-year-old Janmoni Konwar returned to the tarpaulin tent that has been her family’s home since July 19. There was no room waiting for her, no bed, no cupboard and no familiar corner in which to keep what she had brought back from Delhi.

There was, however, a gold medal.

For a family living on an embankment after floodwaters submerged their home in 2 No. Mojia Bheti of Bhogdoiporia Gaon in Assam’s Jorhat district, the medal represented something larger than a sporting victory. It was proof that amid the wreckage left behind by one of the worst floods to hit Upper Assam in decades, one dream had survived.

Janmoni had won gold at the National Karate Championship held at Talkatora Indoor Stadium in New Delhi from August 7 to 9.

Four athletes from Assam competed in the Ashihara form of karate. One returned with a bronze medal. Janmoni returned with gold.

But her real battle had begun weeks before she entered the competition arena.

The flood that came for everything

The embankment breached barely 150 metres from Janmoni’s home. The floodwaters entered with such force that the family had little time to react.

They managed to save some essential documents and, significantly, Janmoni’s medals and prizes.

Almost everything else was lost.

The family’s home was submerged. Their fishery, built over years, was badly damaged. Ducks and poultry were swept away. Their buffaloes were rescued and moved to safer ground near the embankment where the family eventually took shelter.

The fishery had also represented something else: Janmoni’s ticket to Delhi.

The family had planned to sell the fish they had raised for nearly three years and use the money to finance her participation in the national championship. The flood destroyed not only their home and livelihood, but also the financial plan behind their daughter’s sporting dream.

“We had planned to sell the fish and send Janmoni to Delhi for her competition. The floods shattered everything,” her elder brother Krishnamoni Konwar says.

The family had already made sacrifices for Janmoni’s career. The previous year, they sold two buffaloes to help fund one of her competitions.

This time, even that option was gone.

A dream almost washed away

Janmoni has been learning karate since she was five.

Her training did not always require a proper sporting facility. She practised at her local club and in the courtyard of her own home. Years of discipline had already produced results: she won bronze in 2023 and gold in 2025.

The 2026 national championship was supposed to be another step forward.

Instead, the flood arrived just as she was preparing for it.

With her home submerged, her family’s livelihood destroyed and rail connectivity disrupted, the possibility of travelling to Delhi began to disappear. For a family struggling to find shelter and secure its immediate future, financing a national sporting competition seemed almost impossible.

Janmoni was close to giving up.

Then help came from an unexpected quarter.

When help arrived

During his visit to flood-affected Assam, Alakh Pandey, popularly known as the founder of Physics Wallah, learnt about Janmoni and her family.

After hearing her story, he decided to help her continue her journey to the national championship. He sponsored the team’s travel to Delhi and back, arranged accommodation and provided the family with a cheque of ₹3 lakh.

Union Minister of State for External Affairs Pabitra Margherita also extended financial assistance of ₹10,000.

For Janmoni’s family, the intervention was about more than meeting travel expenses.

It reopened a door that the flood had almost shut.

“Pandey Sir was a God-sent messenger for us,” the family says.

Janmoni could go to Delhi.

But getting there was only part of the fight.

Training on an embankment

While much of the family’s attention was focused on survival and recovery, Janmoni returned to practice.

Her training ground was no longer the comfortable surroundings she had known.

It was the embankment.

There was no proper training hall. No certainty about where the family would sleep the following night. No assurance about when they would return home. Around her, other flood-affected families were also trying to rebuild their lives.

Yet Janmoni continued practising.

For a teenager preparing for a national championship, the circumstances were far removed from the controlled environment in which elite athletes normally train. But the basic requirement remained unchanged: discipline.

She trained day after day.

The flood had changed almost everything around her. It had not changed the reason she had begun karate at five.

The journey to Delhi

Eventually, the journey became possible.

Janmoni travelled to Delhi, carrying with her not just the expectations of her family but the weight of everything they had sacrificed to keep her sporting career alive.

Then came the championship.

And then came the result.

Gold.

The medal now carries a story that cannot be separated from the circumstances in which it was won.

It carries the story of a home swallowed by floodwaters. Of fish that could not be sold. Of livestock lost. Of a family forced to live under a tarpaulin sheet. Of a young athlete who trained on an embankment when she could have been forgiven for putting her sporting ambitions on hold.

It also carries the story of timely assistance that transformed an almost impossible journey into a possible one.

The champion returns home—to a tent

Janmoni returned to Assam through Dibrugarh Airport on August 10.

But there was an unusual contrast to her homecoming.

For most athletes returning from a national championship with a gold medal, victory means returning to familiar surroundings—to a home, a room, family celebrations and a place to display the medal.

Janmoni returned to a tent on an embankment.

By the time this story is being written, she is asleep there, with her gold medal close to her.

The medal has a place.

Home does not—at least not yet.

According to her brother, the family may not be able to think about returning home until November.

For Janmoni, the challenges ahead extend beyond the flood recovery. She is in Class XII. She has her studies to complete, a sporting career to pursue and a family to support as they attempt to rebuild their lives.

The gold medal, therefore, is not an ending.

It is another beginning.

The larger story behind the medal

Janmoni’s story is not a substitute for the larger tragedy unfolding across flood-hit Assam. Thousands of families continue to deal with damaged homes, lost livelihoods and uncertain futures. For many, rebuilding will take months and, in some cases, considerably longer.

But her story offers a different lens through which to view disaster.

Floods are measured in hectares submerged, villages affected, houses damaged and people displaced. Those numbers are necessary to understand the scale of a catastrophe. But behind every number is an individual story—of loss, adaptation, endurance and, sometimes, unexpected victory.

Janmoni’s gold medal does not erase what the flood destroyed.

It does not rebuild her house.

It does not restore the fishery or replace the livestock the family lost.

What it does is mark one small victory in a much larger struggle.

Her story is ultimately not about a young athlete defeating a flood.

It is about what happens when circumstances remove almost every advantage a person has, yet leave behind one thing that cannot easily be washed away: the will to continue.

Janmoni has learnt to stand when much around her has fallen. She has learnt to keep moving when stopping would have been easier.

And perhaps that is why the image of her returning to a tarpaulin shelter with a national gold medal carries such weight.

The medal belongs to the champion.

But the tent is a reminder of the Assam that still needs to recover.