NEW DELHI — The family clung to the rooftop. All around them, floodwaters swirled. One of the family members was in a wheelchair.

Just as things appeared at their most perilous, an Indian military helicopter swooped in, plucking the woman off the rooftop and delicately hoisting her to safety.

“Hail India!” several people wrote on Twitter after video of the rescue went viral on Monday.

“Thank God!” said another.

In the past week, Kerala, a bushy, tropical, low-lying state in southern India, has been walloped by monster floods. The heaviest rainfall in nearly a century has swamped the state, knocking the international airport out of commission, fizzling electricity, inundating hospitals and chasing more than a million people from their homes. Several hundred have died and nearly 220,000 have been displaced.