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That's what happened in August when after monsoon rains the Kosi burst its banks and flooded half of Bihar, wiping out villages and farms and displacing more than 3 million people.
The river is notorious for such cataclysmic events and experts say the government should have been prepared for such a scenario and taken preventive action such as reinforcing embankments and removing silt from the river bed.
"This is the mother of all floods," said P V Unnikrishnan of aid agency ActionAid, summing up the devastation.
The Kosi, a tributary of the mighty Ganges, flooded an area roughly the size of Belgium. The floods changed the course of the river, shifting it 120 km towards a dry river channel it last flowed through 250 years ago.
"It looked angry, very angry and we could do nothing, absolutely nothing," said Kashiram Singh, a farmer.
When Kadam Lal was a little boy, his grandfather would tell him stories about the terrifying floods unleashed by the Kosi. Now he has seen with his own eyes why the Kosi is called the "River of Sorrow".
"Over 100 acres of my land was gone within minutes," said Lal, a now grey-haired farmer, pointing at a swirling barrage of muddy water powering down what were once lush green fields.
POOR PLANNING
It's the Kosi's worst flooding in 50 years, but not all of it is nature's doing.
Poor planning, corruption and government apathy contributed to the devastating floods which have left tens of thousands of villagers in relief camps, many with little food.
When the Kosi first broke through the embankment intended to contain it on Aug. 18, the breach was about 1 km long, but 24 hours later it had widened to over 15 km.
Experts say the floods could have been avoided if the embankments in Nepal at the river's mouth had been reinforced as recommended by engineers who sent letters to New Delhi in April urging that such measures be taken.
Flowing from the Nepalese Himalayas, the embankments are maintained by India under an agreement with Nepal.
As the Kosi's waters began to rise, engineers faxed messages to the Bihar government desperately pleading for emergency measures be taken to alleviate the expected flooding.
Nothing was done and now half of Bihar, one of India's poorest states, is covered in water.
Engineers might only be able to plug the gap in December when the water flow decreases during the dry season, but the river may never return to its former route.
"It is an extremely difficult job at hand as the entire river is flowing through the new route," Nitish Mishra, Bihar's disaster management minister told Reuters.
"People should get away from its path now."
In 1956, India and Nepal built a dam in the Himalayas to control the Kosi's flow. It took seven years to build the dam and a 39-km embankment to jacket the extremely turbulent river. Once completed, authorities virtually forgot all about it.
"The silt continued to deposit and the river bed rose without anyone thinking about dredging and de-silting," said Sunita Narain, a climate change expert in New Delhi.
The inevitable happened last month when the river flooded following heavy rains.
The damage is also economic. Bihar is the fifth largest producer of rice in India and agriculture experts say it will take a long time for the region to recover.
"The impact of the floods will have a much larger regional effect," said B.P. Singh, president of the All India Grain Exporters.
Left with no means of earning a living, hundreds of farmers are migrating to western India in search of jobs.
"They don't have any choice, but I will stay here and watch," said the bespectacled Kadam Lal. "I am too old to join them now," he said as 20 men left the village.
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Bihar is land of Chankya and the great rulers of earlier times. Kosi like any other river behaves and it can be controlled if proper planning is done. We had one of the glamourous Chief Minster before who ruled with an unqusetioned authority popularly called Lalu. As he had done with rodas and other infrastructure no work wasw done for many years and this one is one of them. But he is holding a dagger and says non competant Nithish. Nithish had done good work for railways and benifits starts coming when Lalu took over. I think the same may happen regarding Lalu in next election. Whatever good work is done will give a good starty for Lalu afterr the next Bihar election. This is defenitely tragic for Bihar.
A little more than 2,000 years ago, as Issa Messiah Jesus Christ was being nailed to a Cross, in great pain and dying, he turned His eyes up towards the Heavens and said: “My Lord, My God, Why Have Thou Forsaken Me?” That of course was a question that he asked at the time of great pain in his life. The same question is now being asked of God and the government by 30 lakh human beings in Bihar and 25 lakhs in Assam why God and their governments have forsaken and forgotten them. Every new day seems to bring one bad news after another and harrowing tales of human beings in dire straits starving and without any hope of being rescued. Any hope that things will get better soon is nowhere in sight and not by a long shot, it seems. Today, tears welled up my eyes reading your report of humans abandoning their own families and little children because they cannot cope any more with this tragedy that has come into their lives. "When our own men have deserted us what help can we expect from 'sarkar' (government). We can now only trust God to come to our rescue," your reporter has quoted a helpless woman called Sarsatia Devi as saying while a 50-year-old woman Phulia Devi, sheltered at Harwat Raj High School relief camp reportedly died of starvation.
With 30 lakh people still trapped in those waters and with such a tardy response from the incompetent, idiotic government headed by the idiot King of Political Idiots, Nitish Kumar, it would be no exaggeration to say that the flooded masses are starving. That there is mass starvation in Bihar and Assam now with people including children dying in hundreds. We know that the governments will never admit this but in 61 years, the people have learnt not to trust the dishonest and corrupt politicians and what they say. In fact it would not be wrong to say that many of them will be thinking of how to make hay out of this tragedy while the sun shines, so to say, as they have done it umpteen times before rather than think of sending the relief supplies on war footing to the starving masses. There are confirmed reports that relief has still not reached western areas of Araria district, which is the most affected, besides Supaul, Purnia and Madhepura. It’s not clear how many relief camps have been opened and how much aid has reached those relief camps and to those still not in relief camps. One report says there are 50 camps in squalid conditions hosting about 30,000 people. At this rate to house 30 lakh people of Bihar and 25 lakhs in Assam, they will need nearly 10,000 camps with enough supplies to feed the people for another 6 months yet with no hope that things will be better after that.