Time for some Water Sports !!!

Yesterday night, Pune experienced some heavy rainfall after a long while. Thunderclaps and lightning kept awakening us intermittently and each time we dug deeper into our sheets and buried our ears into the pillows. We slept well despite the current failing in the middle of the night. It was a cool and pleasant night.

Each day, my roommate awakens at 7:00 am, the first in our household. After she is done with her morning ablutions, she awakens me.

This morning she awakes and shrieks in horror, “Paaaaani”

My sleepy self assumed that there was water leaking from the tap and I asked her to go close the taps.

She however continues in spasmodic interjections, “Water”, Paaani”, “Utho”, “Dekho”,”Oh No”…

The gravity of the situation strikes me then. I conclude that she is drowning.

I jump out of the bed, blanket in hand and think of a source of water large enough to drown a 5ft, 3” girl.

With my otherwise fertile imagination, failing me at this crucial moment, I just decide to follow the sound of her shrieks. She happens to be in the adjacent bed room, screaming over the remaining people sleeping..

“Paaaani” …“Uthhooo”… “Uthhooo” …

I wondered if this was a new form of alarm she devised of rousing us up. My brain comes up with this brilliant risk mitigation strategy. I decided that maybe if I covered her up with the blanket she would calm down and stop yelling!

And just when I was about to cast the blanket over her head, it happened.

I slipped!
“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…………”… “Ouch”!

What was happening, I was confused and wet, was I drowning???

I frantically managed to get up and looked around and then it struck me - Our house was flooded with ankle deep water.

Phew!!!

We looked around for the source of the miscreance and realized that the balcony drainage was blocked and the rain water with no where to escape decided to seep in from under the door and out into the hall and continued its arduous journey into our kitchen and the bed rooms. On its way it watered out the TV set, the mattress in the hall, our books, our little electric kettle and our iron. So much for irrigation!

And then began the tiresome labor of four girls fighting against the water. (Which fought back quite valiantly, I must say)

But then by getting down on all fours and fighting with brooms, mops and funny looking aids given by our “ever so helpful” neighbours (note the abundant sarcasm), we conquered the water. We emerged victorious albeit drenched and dripping. But we won!!!

Overall, this morning was fun, all we needed were some beach balls and swimming costumes, that would have completed the party!