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| heavy nighttime rains |
- It has rained in Kolkata pretty steadily all day yesterday, and through most of the night. As anyone who knows me will know... this made me really, really happy! I am a hardened and confirmed pluviophile – someone made peaceful and happy by the rain! Some good news on the personal front went extremely well with the (in my opinion) fantastic weather, adding layers of awesomeness to already extant awesomeness.
This morning, I woke happy, ready to
take on the world, and looking forward to a day at the office of the
NGO I volunteer with. I was going to get a lot of work done, have a
lot of fabulous adda, and scandalise a colleague some more with my
“nasty” jokes. Then... i looked out the window. It was still
raining, and the day promised to be great.
So off i went, to the baby garage, to
leave monkey and head for the office. Lalala. Except the garage wala
called as i was locking my door ... “dont leave! We are
waterlogged! Even the evevator pit is flooded and theres water up to
the first step of the staircase!” Okay ... but i've kinda left
anyway, so let me get there and i'll see... how bad could it be? Five
minutes later garage wali calls “don't turn the cab into this main
road! Its all flooded”. So, i'll get off at the corner of the
highway and leg it, i think – and say. “But, but how will u walk
here? Its all flooded.” i paid no attention. After all she hadn't
been outside, she was talking on the basis of what she could see from
the balcony.
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| not so bad :D |
And then, i was at the corner, and the
main road WAS flooded, including the sidewalks. And i am talking knee
deep. With a sigh i start wading, generally, it wouldn't be so bad,
but this is Kolkata. The so-called sidewak is sporadic, appearing and
disappearing suddenly, dug up in places while other spots have mounds
of tiles or stones. Bad enough on a normal day. When it is all under
roughly a foot of muddy water, making all the pitfalls (literal and
metaphorical) invisible, well... let's just say the situation is not
ideal to be carrying laptops in.
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| identify the drain and the sidewalk |
Did i mention the drain? Oh yeah! This
is Kolkata. So this new, planned, township part of the city has large
open drains... about 2.5 feet deep and roughly a foot wide. Which, by
the way, are also under water and equally invisible at this moment.
So, here i am, engaged in a recarious,
foot slipping, blood curdling, slipper sliding wade through to the
baby garage, and i also have to worry about whether i am veering too
far to the right and might end up in the bloody drain! (dont even get
me started on what's probably in the water i am wading through. The
less i think about it at this point the better.
And then! It starts to pour! And i mean
pour like there is no goddamn tomorrow, umbrellas are redundant,
raincoats dont matter, whatever you do it will get you anyway kind of
pour! So, somehow trying to protect the lappy from getting too much
of nature's largesse, and trying to prevent my sizeable rear end from
ending up in the water or in the drain, and trying to prevent myself
breaking a foot or an ankle in an unseen, hiding under the water
sidewalk pothole, i somehow manage to get to the building.
Now i must trudge up five floors (water
in lift well, remember? Hence no elevator service, aint that great?).
So anyhow, i made it in one piece.
And the first thing i did was run
to the roof of the building to try to catch some of the chaos on
film. Empty highway was a testament to cabs and buses being mostly
off the streets, people were returning dejected from the Metro Rails
station, and some of the local train lines were out as well.
Well, got a dose of childhood :D a
RAINY DAY from work, and khichudi for lunch. Almost worth the little
swim in the morning.
