Floods 2

My first stint after engineering was in Kolkata & after MBA in Mumbai & currently I reside in Bangalore. All these 3 cities experience flooding which has it’s own peculiarity.

Kolkata:

These were the days of limited means and I would use the mini buses to travel from Ballygunge to Park Street. Today I cannot imagine getting squeezed into minibuses to go to my office. But those were early days of work and we were students by heart and salesmen only as a profession. So it was all taken in the spirit of experience. 

When we would get wet, we would not go inside and just hang on the food board so that our clothes dry up before we reach the office with dry clothes. These were also the days of drinking for any reason - sorrow, happiness or rain. Any kind of rain would invariably end with let’s enjoy the rains & buy a qtr (old monk) - which we camouflaged in our raincoats and ordered egg-chicken roll and had a party on the road side. Being a dog friendly bunch invariably we will feed part of the roll to the wet and sad looking dogs who nobody cares about. Of course after a few swigs, the comparison was inevitable by someone who is feeling neglected (which is always the case in any group) that we are no better off than the dogs. This will of course lead to the next Qtr and so on.

One of the funny incidents (now I feel sad when I think about it) was when our lane was flooded - we opened the floor and there was a river outside.In 92 there were still rickshaws which were pulled by men and we had to call one of them to ferry us out of the house to the bus stop. 

Mumbai:

In Mumbai, carrying a folding umbrella and losing it multiple times was a constant worry. Those were the pre-laptop & pre backpack days and one would carry just a small bag just to squeeze into the local trains. There were umpteem times when we got drenched in rain and managed to reach home in that condition, but there was one time when the train stopped near Mahim as Mahim creek was overflowing and we had to get down from the train. On the track we found scorpions and snakes which were as lost as we were. After wading through knee deep water - I found a bus and managed to reach near Bandra and walked the rest of the way home.

Bangalore: 

In Bangalore the worst incident was when our basement was flooded and water went inside my car. It was a harrowing experience on the 15th August where for 2 days there was  no water & power and hence no lift and drinking water and loo water - so one can understand the predicament of 200+ families. It was funny that we were using buckets to fill water from the swimming pool and then ferrying them. Few families shifted out. I should add that other parts of Bangalore have gone through worse.

In another incident as my car waded through the water through a dug up road - my mudguard of my car was yanked because of some construction material which was hidden inside the water. 

Bangalore / Mumbai / Delhi / Silchar - All cities I have stayed in get constantly flooded. Every season, the degrees might vary and it is assumed that the system is broken and it cannot be fixed. Just yesterday we were crossing an unfinished flyover near Koramangala which was started when my daughter was in class XIIth - 4 years back and it is estimated that it will take another 2 years for 1 ½ - 2 km flyover. That’s the speed of development, if we can call it.

With WFH at least the travesty of driving in a pothole riddled roads and never-ending traffic jams took a backseat. Not for long though