It is drama time at Radio Pakistan as the listeners, mainly rural or peri-urbanites have their ears glued to the air waves for, being beamed out from the little magic box is a story of courage and resilience that rings a bell. The community of men, women and children, who would not be doing anything else right now, are rapt listeners to what seems an amazing replay of misfortunes they themselves have been visited by, during last summers disastrous flooding. Still deeply scarred by what they have lost in terms of men and material, the group shares a deep empathy with Majeeda and Anno and Sajawal, in fact with all the characters of the twice-weekly Umeed-e-Sehr series broadcast gratis as a, public service by Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation. The agony of a Majeeda still searching for the mortal remains of a mother swept away by the flood waters, the frustration of an Anno twiddling his fingers because the local headmaster has no means of making the flooded schoolroom usable, the inconsolable misery of a Sajawal whose patch of water logged agricultural land will not be cultivatable for another six months and the newly wedded Sughraan who witnessed her trousseau being swept into the canal...the characters all replay the despair and desolation bordering on suicidal thinking that is surreptitiously working its way into the minds and hearts of the countrys flood afflicted. True, the receding waters have given place to scores of new hutments but out there are a plethora of dysfunctional psychological thought processes which could mar the lives of a generation to come Given that radio is, even in todays fast paced world of multi-channel visual media, by far the most popular and easily accessed means of getting a word through, UNESCOs effort in designing and executing this radio drama series in partnership with the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association for social and psychological rehabilitation of the flood-affected, carries a message of rebirth to a vast local population still battling the odds. As always, the initial humanitarian aid did achieve its primary objective of saving life and providing food sustenance in the effected areas but, again, as always before, it was not equipped to repair the traumatic and incubated psychological distress the effected people face now. Coming up from the wings of a trauma that has displaced millions, are issues like gender based violence, emergency telecommunication, hygiene and sanitation, epidemic control, even environment and clean drinking water. Recent research admits that so far, the delivery of reliable information about these issues which have arisen as an aftermath of the great deluge continues to be a gap area and flood ravaged communities are getting increasingly distressed by behavioural and psychological problems in the wake of the flooding. The 2005 earthquake had given a similar red signal to forecast such a hazardous situation. Happily however, this time the Majeedas, the Annos and the Sajawals born of the flooding will be saved from suicidal despair and depression by psychological and behavioural support. They will be supported by characters of radio drama like Razia, Hashmat Bibi, Seema and the Imam of the local mosque. Placed as the metaphorical and psychological mentors in a radio-drama community populated by the hopelessly despaired, Majeeda, Anno and Sajawal, all inspirational characters in the dramatic PBC series, will come out as role models so vital for the lifesaving of the disaster struck. The dramatic solutions, life relevant and actually possible, offered by these characters would be sufficiently relevant to the local social and cultural contexts to be able to be emulated by the listeners...if the Imam of the village mosque says that nature and not the newly wed Sughraan brought on the calamity, if Razia the village matriarch deems it kosher for housewives to learn skills to generate an income, if Seema can offer to fill in for the absent teachers of a school being used as a refugee centre, if Anno can manually haul out the water from his classroom and get studies going then what is to keep the audience of these radio dramas from getting on with their lives? After all who can deny that although food, clothing and habitat are the primary human requirements, those distressed by the floodwaters still have countless social and psychological issues getting, to be overcome. These include issues of displacement, of information about how to re-start living, of how to acquire Watan Cards and computerised CNICs, of ways to fight the rampant hierarchical oppression for acquiring camps and even dealing with the trauma of relocation. For life, if it has to be continued is going to need all this and much more before people stop counting loss of kith and kind. The good news is that, dawn is here. Nyla Daud