The flood that was

After a long, long hiatus and toying for the nth time with the silly idea of pulling down my blog once for all, here Iam scribbling insanely again :) After all, some things never change n Iam glad they don't!The Mumbai flood that I survived is too old an incident to write about now but it's one incident that'll remain etched in my memory forever.So here goes....

It was one evening when young dreams of fun and frolic suddenly sprouted wings: Classes were called off owing to heavy rains pouring through walls and ceiling.Knee-deep water had collected in front of our classroom on the first floor.I was having a lot of fun with my my friends,making paper boats and creeping up behind people to push those unsuspecting innocent guys right into the pool of water.Just when I was vehemently propagating plans of having a rain dance on our hostel terrace,all hell broke lose.It began to rain cats and dogs, reducing the visibility to a maximum of 8-10 feet.Being a member of the enthu rain-lovers clan, a classmate of mine quickly appeared at the bistro with his guitar.The next hour saw a group of about 20 brats making merry, singing and dancing together in the rain and our dude strumming away passionately on his guitar.It was quite some time before reality hit us and when it did hit us, it hit us really hard.Seeing the quickly surging anxiety levels of our staff members competing hard with the mercuric rise in water levels,we called it a day to all the fun and frolic and returned to the cosy confines of our dingy hostel rooms.Things turned from bad to worse in a jiffy....

Not a single warm hello crooning into my cell phone, absolutely no sign of sound from the TV on the floor below ours,absolutely no sign of rocking music from any of our laptops either....just "Pitter-patter Pitter-patter Pitter-patter" interrupted by hushed voices from neighbouring rooms .....These were all I could hear, sitting confined within the 4 walls of my hostel room, for nearly two long days that seemed like eternity.Sheets of plastic lying on the huge sea of water collected outside my window,shiny mirrors here n there in the dirty brown water,every human face that I saw around me being devoid of smiles and imprinted with an unmistakable stamp of worry : these were all I saw during those two long days that seemed like eternity.The plastic sheets and mirrors that stood firm in the flowing water had me wondering how scrap had floated around and got pegged midway like that.It took a while for me to realize that what I thought were 'plastic sheets' were actually the rooftops of our profs' cars buried in the murky water and the mirrors were the rear view mirrors of bikes!

No food,no water,no telephones,no power for two full days.Rummaging every room in the wing for the smallest morsel of food,using laptops just one at a time for playing movies to take our minds off what was happening,playing cards and singing in order to kill time,straining our ears to listen to every word of the radio news reporting the deluge....these were all we did during those two gloomy grey days.When we could finally step out of the hostel and wade through waist deep water to reach a departmental store, the sight that met our eyes and the stench from carcasses that hit our noses were unbearable!The guy at the departmental store refused to give us more than one packet of food per head,claiming his supplies had to last for the entire suburb and he could just manage enough to keep people alive.Thankfully, the guy who runs our mess was sweet enough to put off our weekly mess holiday by 2 days and keep it open for us.Having run out of gas,he had a tough time scurrying around the city to get cooking gas and cook a decent meal for all of us.

We were lucky enough to have power restored within two days and telephone networks restored within four days.There were parts of Mumbai that went without power and telephone networks for 10 full days!!!Aged people had to climb 30 stories just to reach their homes, our classmates in the new boys hostel had to swim through 6 feet high water to reach their rooms,dying people could not be saved beause they couldn't be removed to hospitals in time,emergency operations in hospitals could not be performed due to lack of power......the list is endless.

Some alarming stats about the deluge:The water was enough to fill 1.6 lakh olympic swimming pools n each olympic swimming pool holds 2.6 lakh litres.The rains received gave Mumbai enough water to meet its requirements for a whole four months!The record even beat Cherrapunji's record by a whole 11 cm. When the rain was just 12 out of 24 hours through, we had reports that it was the highest ever rainfall since 1910!

No words are enough to describe this experience of a lifetime.Although it's a terribly abrupt way to end a piece of writing, I shall stop here.I can write no more about the ghastly details of what I saw and experienced.Iam just so glad Iam alive and ticking :) Thank you God for a new lease of life.