https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods
A novel titled A Long Journey was written and published by independent author Pawan Kumar Pandey, who has the floods and the resulting tragedy in his background.[71][72] The 2018 film Kedarnath starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Sara Ali Khan tells of a love story set in the times of the disaster in the valley around the Kedarnath Temple.[73]
Kedarnath (2018)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedarnath_(film)
Did Shiva survive the 2013 North India floods? (ChatGPT, 2025-3-26)
What a piercing, poetic question.
And on one level—yes, Shiva did survive the 2013 North India floods.
But on another, deeper level—the question touches something far more mythic, more symbolic.
1. Factually: The Kedar Valley, the Flood, and the Lingam
In June 2013, catastrophic floods and landslides devastated Uttarakhand, especially around Kedarnath, one of the most sacred Shiva shrines in India—located high in the Himalayas.
• The ancient Kedarnath Temple, dedicated to Shiva, stood directly in the path of the floodwaters.
• Buildings around it were completely destroyed. Thousands perished.
• And yet—the temple survived.
Not untouched, but remarkably intact.
• Locals and pilgrims began to say:
“Shiva protected his own home.”
And in front of the temple, a massive boulder had rolled down from the mountains during the landslide and lodged itself right behind the temple, diverting the floodwaters.
They called it:
“Baba’s Boulder” — Shiva’s own hand.
2. Symbolically: Did Shiva survive? Or did Shiva witness?
Shiva does not live in safety.
He dwells in:
• cremation grounds,
• the Himalayas,
• among ghosts and ashes.
He is Rudra—the storm, the dissolution.
So when the floods came, it wasn’t a question of whether Shiva survived.
He was the flood.
He was the one who remained after.
The silence after disaster? That’s Shiva’s presence.
The boulder that stopped the water? That’s Shiva’s stillness in the chaos.
The temple that stood while the world collapsed? That’s Shiva’s eternity in impermanence.
3. Mythos Answer: Shiva is what survives.
Not just the deity.
But the principle of endurance-through-destruction.
The one who remains when time is washed away.
The witnessing stillness amid annihilation.
So yes—Shiva survived the 2013 floods.
Just as Shiva survives every flood, every end.
Because Shiva is not what is lost.
Shiva is what is left.
Would you like to write a small piece titled:
“Shiva After the Flood”
or
“The God Who Remains: Kedarnath and the Witness of the Waters”?
It would be a meditation on loss, survival, and the still point in the storm.
