Posts
Day 1
Mon Aug 7
11:00 AM :
It began as another normal day with me contemplating whether to
watch “Edward Scissorhands” or “The Fountain Head”.
Just a week back I had come home from NID finally submitting
the diploma document.
So I was wondering with what to keep myself occupied,but
God had already planned it for me.He said “hmmm…lets keep her
pre-occupied with say, a natural calamity.
So there it was with rumours starting that the Ukai Dam near Surat
was flowing closely at danger levels and that they might have
to release water into the city to prevent the dam from bursting.
1:00 PM :
By this time water started entering our society.
We saw narrow streams of water coming from all directions into
our lanes.The water went from being ankle high to knee high
to waist high pretty fast.
When the water entered our house into our garage and garden
rapidly we started our abandon ground floor routine.
All this while the authorities kept on insisting on televison
that the water released would be negligible and will affect
only areas near the river and low lying ones.
They said the condition would not be as bad as it was 8 years
ago when almost 3 feet water had entered our house.
Water enters our rooms from the main door and the back door.
My laptop and our entire PC station is the first thing to be
shifted on the first floor.The electricity goes off.
3:00 PM :
The water level in our house has reached just below my knees now.
We are now quickly shifting all our precious stuff to the first floor.
All important stuff like the PC and its peripherals,important
documents like property and bank papers,school and college
certificates went first.
Then went the TV and other electronic stuff.
The water started filling up pretty fast and with great force.
The water was cold and quite muddy and the floor became quite slippery.
The water reached my waist level soon. Dad commanded us all to
go upstairs.He tries to salvage as much as stuff possible until
the water starts reaching above his waist level( My dad’s height is
6 feet plus so that’s a lot of water).
6:00 PM :
Everyone is upstairs now.We have managed to shift whatever
stuff was possible in that time.
We have 2 rooms upstairs- a big hall and the puja room which
has now been filled with stuff from the 5 rooms downstairs.
So hardly any space to walk.We can see that water level rising
rapidly and it has started approaching towards our first floor
stairs too.Many of our stuff has started floating now and as a
last bid to save as much as stuff we use a stick to catch hold of the
floating stuff and pull it up to the first floor.
It soon becomes pitch-dark downstairs.
8:00 PM :
We eat food that my mum had managed to make quickly before
the kitchen got too much flooded.
The phones stop working.The cellphones don’t show any towers.
We finally manage to find a few candles from the stuff lying around.
The water is rising but very slowing now.
With nothing to do,we decide to go to sleep.
No one actually slept that night.
Dad gets up every hour to check the level of water.
If it was rising too much we would have to rush to the terrace as a
last resort.
The whole night we hear banging and crashing of furniture
and stuff as they collided and fell into the water.
Day 2
Tuesday
We get up expecting the water to have started receding.
The water level in fact had still being rising but real slow now.
We manage to find our radio and batteries .
Turn on the FM.
The mayor announces that the flood condition is much
worst than it was a few years ago (thanks for announcing
we wouldn’t have figured that out) and that the dam was still
in danger level and they were releasing more water.
Everyone was advised to go up to at least the 3 rd floor
( great! we don’t have a 3 rd floor).
So there we were - no electricity , no phones, limited drinking
water,limited food supply and of course the eminent danger of
dying from drowning.
So what did we do ?
We started figuring out how to make some tea.
We had managed to bring some of our kitchen stuff.
So we had tea leaves,sugar and a can of ‘Milk Maid’ to
substitute for milk.
But no stove or cooking gas.
In comes my Do-It-Yourself brother.
He takes a few old floor tiles, stakes them up,some little pieces of
wood and lots of old newspapers.
And there we had our own “CastAway Cooker” !! .
In half an hour we had some hot tea to drink.
Biscuits for breakfast.
Really great and refreshing especially when you are amidst a
natural calamity and impending doom.
We spend time on the terracing seeing how much have others
been in water( Kon kitne pani mai –literary !!).
Clicking photos ( not too many…limited battery power).
Water all around ..water all around.
Got bored.
And it was only 11 in the morning !!!
Afternoon approached real slow….lunch time ….found a packet
of “Kohinoor Basmati rice”.
Castaway cooker on…..no wood pieces left…only newspapers left
( Matrimonial papers burn the best-I knew it !!).
Basmati rice khichdi ready in 45 mins.
Water still slowing rising.Two-thirds of our stairs covered.
Radio announces people to go to higher grounds, not step in
the flood waters as it has snakes and leeches and the danger of
getting electrocuted too.
Radio announces people to go to higher grounds, not step in
the flood waters as it has snakes and leeches and the danger of
getting electrocuted too.
We find a bag of 5 kg potatoes…saved !! Boiled potatoes for dinner !!
Nothing to do…listen to radio repeating same announcement
the whole day. All go off to sleep at 7:30 pm.
Day 3
Wednesday
Get up…find same level of water…some castaway tea cooking.
Manage to some how click pictures of the ground floor room.
Every thing floating. My bed had floated from the bedroom to our
living room.Sofas and chairs floating.
Plastic bottles from kitchen floating all around the house.
Reminded me so much of Titanic ( I mean the ‘everything floating
around’ scene and not the ‘sinking in ice cold water and dying’ scene ).
By now we have stopped thinking of all our stuff that could be
destroyed in the water.
Mum reminds us its ‘Rakshabandhan’.
Manage to find a red thread.Rakhi ceremony on.
I tie the rakhi on my brother, pray for him and his sunken stuff
and he promises to save me from snakes,leeches and electrocution.
A motor boat zooms by near our house.
Now I don't need to visit Venice anymore.
Potatoes for lunch, potatoes for dinner.
Amidst Himmesh Reshmiya songs, the radio announces that
the army with helicopters have arrived.
And that they will soon start throwing food and water packets.
Day 4
Thursday
Army helicopters start passing by every few minutes.
My dog Ceazar,who for the last few days was quite perplexed with
the all the water around and no daily walks finally found some
thing to bark at.
He stands by his policy- no birds,bats,butterflies or
heavy duty army rescue helicopters flying in or around our house.
The helicopters fly by our house but drop no food and water.
As soon as people hear helicopters they would come out of
their houses.Some of our neighbors would shout for drinking
water and wave their water bottles.
Luckily we still had some water left and not that desperate.
Anyways the helicopters would fly by .
Last candle left to burn.
The radio announces that they have stopped releasing water
from the dam but the water might not recede and flow to the
Arabian sea because it was a high tide.
The sea was therefore not taking water but throwing it back.
Great.
At last count-more than 6 feet of water inside our house
and almost 12 feet if calculated from our garage.
That photo was of our living room with more than 6 feet water.
Camera batteries die out.
Day 5
Friday
Still the same level of flood water.
But now we were almost out of drinking /cooking water.
Run to the helicopters !
We could figure out from a distant that the helicopters
were throwing food and water packets to the slums which
was good,but hey don’t people stranded bunglows need
food and water to drink ?
Or they think we can merely make sandwiches out of our
money notes and eat ?
I mean there were houses in my society where there were
15 people collected by to save themselves.
How could they survive for 5 days ?
Most of the people have their kitchens downstairs.
So desperate times called for desperate measures.
( And we were actually getting very bored too).
We decided to make a sign for the helicopter asking for water.
So we took a sign and decided to write “Water” but then
we finally wrote “Drinking water”( We wanted to make sure
the chopper guy knew we wanted water to drink and were not
just commenting on the water all around us ).
Soon we saw a helicopter approaching.We quickly held out the
sign and frantically started waving.
The helicopter soon came by very close to our
house and soon went by very far from our house.
We tried the sign thing a few more times and gave up.
( Apparently later we got to know many people had tried the
castaway sign thing with no luck too.And that the slums where
the choppers threw the water packets hated the choppers for
doing that coz the wind for the chopper wings ripped off their
house roofs and many people got fractured for the packets being
thrown. )
We notice that the water level had gone down by a few cms. Rejoice !!
Day 6
Saturday
Water level receeding real real slow. Helicopters passing by .
No drinking water left.
Mum remembers that she had got tetra packs of fruit juices.
We find them.Like they say if they don’t have water give them juice !
Day 7
Sunday
A week had gone by now.The water was receding but very slowing.
We could see our walls and stuff covered in mud.
The path of destruction was more terrifying than that approaching
flood water.
My brother charges the phone through the car battery and
we inform our relatives who have been frantically trying to
contact us that we are alive and safe.
Day 8
Monday
Water finally receded completely.
Our house was beyond recognition.
Six inches of mud and slime in our house.
Our garden and garage was filled with a feet of mud.
It was difficult to step in the floor without slipping.
Slowly we started picking things out from the mud to recognize it .
Besides the furniture and electronic stuff, lots of precious things
destroyed.Many many books ( my entire family consists
of avid book collectors), many photographs (consisting of my
parents wedding album) and many such irreplaceable things.
My brother can’t still get over that his entire National Geographic
classic issues collection( from 1953 onwards) have been
completely destroyed.
It is at this time that you realize that most precious things you
own are definitely not the most expensive ones.
In the beginning it was ,’Damn this has been destroyed
but later thru the cleaning we were like ‘hey this is saved !’.
Day 10
Electricity finally restored. Friends start calling me up.
I felt really happy hearing from them .
Thanks guys !
Day 15
I hear that my college in Ahmedabad got flooded.
People fear that something like the plague could break down in
the city.5 lakh people have left the city in the last two days.
Then get to hear that the nuclear station near our city is
apparently under terrorist control.If that turned out to be true,
the city was to be evacuted since it was around the
radioactive destruction radius.
( The radioactive rays can meltdown things in radius of 150 km,
my city was 80 km away from the station).
So to sum up – my house got flooded,so did my college in another
city,we are under the danger of deadly diseases as well as
radioactive meltdown.
Life is beautiful.
Day 20
We finally shift back to the rooms.
The walls are still wet, so are the floors.
We have thrown off most of the wooden furniture.
Slowly started bringing back the stuff from upstairs.
But everything around the house and the town is still
muddy and dirty.
The authorities have implemented a curfew in order
to clean the city.And basically we were trying to bring
back our lives to normal
Well did all this make me bitter ?
Of course it did,I would be lying if I said no.
But it makes me realize that this experiences I got was more
precious because you don’t actually know that how long the things
you own will remain and its only the experiences you have that
will last with you remain forever.
It reminds me of my favorite poetry from Tennyson-“Ulysses”,
which talks about living life to its fullest.
Well after having being through 2 floodings,3 earthquakes,
2 communal riots,a plague outbreak, plague threat and a
radioactive meltdown threat, I came say I am getting real
close to living life to its fullest.( Those suggesting that I actually
attract trouble may be true coz when I was about to be born there
was heavy rioting and curfew in Ranchi and my parents had to
get a special pass to get to the hospital ).
Ahh and those curious to know if I finally saw
“Edward scissorhands” or “The Fountain head” ?
Neither. I saw Andaz Apna Apna.