Water, water everywhere

Finally I get time to write about the great tragedy that stuck me some 10 days back. It left me bedless, and filled with illness. Now that I have recuperated let me narrate the eventful story:

It was 27th of May and I came from work at 9.30 AM after putting yet another niteout. I was pretty tired and wanted to sleep till 5 PM or so. I was in pretty deep sleep and suddenly around 4PM, even my unconscious could feel it, all the light of the afternoon was sucked out, and I could feel those gusty winds. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1124875.cms)

Seeing that it was going to pour I was really happy. I love rain, especially when it pours. Bk was still home and was about to leave, but seeing that it would be impossible to go in his bike he hopped on with me. We started to office in some really heavy rain. The excitement of it all made us overlook the unlatched windows. What a great mistake we made.

The journey to office was a eventful to say the least. With my aging Maruthi 800, after going 100m we were worried we might get stuck in the rain. Also our visibility was close to 0. Luckily we tailed a Qualis and kept navigating. Our usual route was blocked by a fallen tree. Many more roads suffered the same state. Then we hit some high ground and thought we could be safe. Well or so we thought, with Bangalore's lovely infrastructure that was just a dream. The BDA guys made sure they put a foot high divider in the middle of the road, but they forgot that both sides of the road needs drainage. Water was logged on one side of the road, and even the otherside it was very slow to drain.

Halfway to our office, we were in 2 feet of water, and not so unexpectedly water started pouring in into the car. Though we didn't figure out the amount of water that got in then, we could feel our feet getting wet. Every second was exciting, we were in constant fear of the car giving up anytime. But Maruthi proved why they are the No. 1 car in India, a 12 year old car making it through a literal flood.

Once we reached office, we were ecstatic and didn't really care about the water logged car. We got on with our work and we returned to the car to go for dinner. That is when we figured our we must have carried atleast 30 litres of dirty water. After some really dumb ways of emptying the car of the water, the stopper in the base of the car was found and we drained out all the water. The floor covering was still sufficiently wet and only after 10 days is it dry enough to get into the car without wincing.

If I had thought that my misery was just the wet floored car, how wrong I was. We went home to find that the hall's floor was pretty wet. Then I ventured into my room to find my bed totally soaked. It was so full with water, even with four people lifting it it was tough. We couldn't find any good place to dry the bed, as it was still threateningly close to raining. With some ingenious ideas my bed is almost dry now, still one corner to go :).

The water left my room smelling funny. I should have taken the cue and avoided my room, but we morons (Arun and myself) stayed there, and got sick. Poor Arun still hasn't recovered. Me atleast got out of it in some 4 - 5 days.

Man, nature is scary. It was a sedate Friday afternoon and in an hours time everything got changed head over heels.

Though rain caused so much havoc, this experience was one of the most exciting ones I had in recent times.

-Palani.