Havildar Devinder checks the rope before he lowers it. It is an eleven-millimetre static rope. He ties it to the base of the post with a figure-eight knot. He pulls twice to test the knot. The knot holds. Then he clips the carabiner to the harness.

The water covered the ford in the night. The river that in June could be crossed on foot is running brown now. It carries branches and a plastic jerrycan. The team arrived at first light, on foot, from the last tarred road. They carried the ropes in their packs. They went down the bank carefully.

On the other side, on a rise of ground, there are eleven people. Six adults and five children. They climbed onto the rise when the water came up. They spent the night there. The rise is getting narrower. Devinder watches the water for a minute before he touches the ropes. He looks for where the current is slowest. He chooses the point for the tensioned rope where the river is narrowest.

The team is four men. First they measure the distance between the banks. It is about twenty metres. Then they throw the bag with the messenger line. The first throw falls short. The second throw carries. A man on the far side ties the line to a tree.

With the messenger line they haul across the tensioned rope. It is a twenty-millimetre rope, thicker than the one on the harness. They tension it with a three-to-one pulley system. The rope crosses the current a metre above the water. They fix it to the post on this side and to the tree on the other. Devinder checks the tension with his hand. The rope is hard as iron.

Devinder clips the pulley onto the tensioned rope. The pulley has an aluminium sheave. To the pulley he ties the harness with two short lines. He also attaches a tag line, to pull the pulley back after each crossing.

A man goes first. Devinder puts the harness on him. He tightens the buckle on his chest. He checks the buckle with two fingers. He tells the man to keep his hands on the rope and not to move his legs. The man crosses hanging from the pulley. It takes him forty seconds. On the other side they take hold of him.

On the other side the three men of the team pull the tag line. The pulley comes back empty along the rope. Devinder takes it again. He makes it ready for the next one.

Then a woman goes. Then another man. Every time Devinder puts on the harness, tightens the buckle, checks with two fingers, clips on the pulley. Every time he says the same sentence: hands on the rope, legs still. Every time the tag line brings the pulley back. The current below rises a finger every hour. Devinder sees it on the post, where he has made a mark with his knife. The mark at four. Another mark at five. A finger between the two marks.

The children go held tight against an adult. The first child is perhaps eight years old. Devinder ties him in front of his father, chest against back, with an extra strap. He tightens. He checks. He sends them. The second child cries and will not let go of his mother. Devinder does not pull him away. He ties the two of them together. He sends them like that.

Two people are left on the rise. A woman and a small child. The child is two or three. The woman holds him in her arms. The water is now half a metre from the mark on the post.

Devinder crosses last himself, towards the rise, hanging from the pulley. He arrives on the other side. He puts the harness on the woman. He ties the child in front of her. He tightens the strap. He checks with two fingers. He clips them to the pulley. He sends them. Then he is alone on the rise, which is now three paces wide.

The pulley comes back empty along the rope. Devinder clips himself on. Before he sets off he looks at the rise behind him, to check that nothing and no one has been left. Nothing has been left. He crosses. Forty seconds. They take hold of him.

On the far bank there are the district officials with a register. They count the people brought out. An officer with a pen asks Devinder for the number. Devinder raises a hand. He holds it in the air a moment, fingers open. Then he counts aloud, looking at the people sitting under the tarpaulin: six adults. Five children. Eleven.

The officer writes eleven in the register. He asks if that is all. Devinder looks once more at the people under the tarpaulin. The small child, the one who is two or three, is in his mother's arms and drinking from a bottle. Devinder looks at the child and does not answer the officer straight away.

Then he does not say the number. He goes over to the mother. He crouches down. He asks the child what his name is. The child does not answer. The mother answers. She says the name. Devinder repeats the name once, quietly, and stands up.

The officer waits with the pen. Devinder comes back to him. He says: eleven. Six big, five small. Then he adds something the officer does not write in the register, because only the number goes in the register. He says the small child's name. The officer looks at him and does not write. Devinder does not explain. He puts on his gloves. He begins to untie the rope from the post, one knot at a time.