The 11 year old who risked his life to save a drowning man twice his size #watwb

There were at least nine men at the indoor pool of the apartment complex in suburban St Paul, Minnesota as the 34 year old man sunk eight feet down to the bottom, unable to swim.
Unfortunately, none of them knew how to swim and the one man, Raghu Nandikotkur, who jumped in with a floating tube was not able to grab the drowning man.

That was when his son, Advaik Nandikotkur, urged by his mother, jumped in. All of 11 years and 36 kilos, the fifth grader swam down to the bottom, grabbed the man (weighing over 80 kilos) by the wrist and pulled him to the surface where the others got the unresponsive man out of the pool.

Based on his experiences of watching movies, Advaik's uncle then provided CPR with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until he saw the man move his eyes and hands. By then, paramedics had arrived and took the man to the hospital.

The man made a full recovery and would come over the next day to personally thank Advaik and the American settled South Indian Nandikotkur family the next day. The Eagan Minnesota police noted that none of them had ever heard of 'a boy jumping in and saving an adult' from drowning, while also nominating Advaik for the department's "Life Saving Award."
 
Even as the boy shyly deflected most of the attention that came his way, his proud parents are surely glad they gave him swimming lessons even though they had not learned it themselves.

Of course, you need more than swimming lessons to be able to do what Advaik did, showing absolute courage and selflessness to risk his own life diving down to bring up a drowning unconscious man twice his size from the bottom of  a pool. And that is what makes Advaik Nandikotkur a true Hero of Kindness.

Author's note:

For the last few years, I have been maintaining a list of real life Heroes of Kindness and Compassion from across the world. The aim, of course, is to restore faith in humanity for those who need it most.


This post is also part of the We Are the World Blogfest, a monthly event to showcase stories of compassion. The idea is to spread positivity and light to counterbalance the negativity and darkness in social media. You can check their pages to find the list of feel-good stories written by bloggers from around the world.

Your cohosts for this month are:  

Inderpreet Uppal, Sylvia Stein, Shilpa Garg, Simon Falk, Damyanti Biswas