After The Flood

Well, we survived. 500 or so in Maharashtra, 80 or so in Mumbai did not. Three feet of rain within a few hours are no joke. As of this morning, we have water and electricity again, but of course no phone. I love my Blackberry though, which strangely seemed to work most of the time, and I am writing this from the Blackberry browser.

More on this little adventure in a few days, but it was quite something. I ended up walking home through 7km/5miles/5hours of knee to hip deep (and sometimes chest deep) sewage floods, at one spot with quite a strong current.

There were no street lights, it was dark evening, there were thousands of laughing people and hundreds of abandoned flooded cars and busses everywhere - and the intermittent thunder of lightening gave the whole scene a bizarrely apocalyptic touch.

When Ksenia reached home, a few hours before me, our apartment was in two inch deep waters from the overflowing terrace. The two miniature drains proved useless and our upstair neighbors having a penchant for throwing newspapers, plastic bags and sometimes even food from their balconies didn't help matters.

Anyways, so much for today. I might try getting to work tomorrow, provided our driver can come up with a new car, because the one he had he had got flooded. He ended up abandoning the car and walking Ksenia home - he really was priceless. Not to mention that this morning he thought it was necessary to come to our door after a one hour rikshah ride, just to apologize for not being able to drive me to work, because he doesn't have a new car yet...

Incredible India indeed.