~~ Day 6: The New Normal ~~

Originally written on Dec 6 2015

Yes, everyone is safe and sound! Things are mentioned to be getting back to normal – I don’t want to sound negative and would definitely love for everything to get back to normal, but I know, it takes weeks for that, and no, things rarely can be same-old-same-old-normal! A new-normal will definitely take form soon!

For me, Sunday used to be that day of waking up late, washing week’s office wear clothes, taking long close-to-burning-hot water head bath on the oil-dripping hair followed by a long afternoon nap! However, taking bath that particular Sunday in November 2005 was completely ruled out (as tank water had already been exhausted and we had to use can/drinking water for all basic and necessary purposes).  By evening, much to our relief, with no rains, the water had drained – but we had no power yet! Me and my roommate wanted to get home to survey the damage and also to get new set of clothes for the day! We went downstairs to our cozy house which now smelt horribly, looked around, collected few clothes from the wardrobe and then as we turned around, our eyes fell on something which made our respective hearts skip at-least a beat, no not in a nice way, and no, don’t worry, there was nothing creepy, crawly or slimy to be scared of! But there was something scarier than all of these– our precious soaked suitcases placed adjacent to our cot & next to the AC, and yes, if you have not guessed yet, ON THE GROUND  And no, again, if you haven’t guessed it yet, those suitcases were not empty, they were full of our precious office wear clothes along with some newly bought stuff too ...

Now, please don’t laugh, who knew we would face this situation in Chennai, and most importantly don’t even ask me why we couldn’t just use that pretty & spacious wardrobe that we had! I guess, let me just explain – we smart-heads (yeah, again, who knew it would flood in Chennai), had from the beginning never kept our ironed/neatly folded office wear clothes in the wardrobe, but had let them be or put them back after wash in our respective suitcases/bags so it doesn’t get pushed around (as that’s what happens in the wardrobe when you look for misplaced stuff which you always find in the invisible corners and only after you have pushed around all the stuff in there & in the process crumpled every piece of cloth).. Ironing clothes is a pain and so the idea! We just didn’t want to re-do the ironing process!  When I come to think of it now, we both never had to look for any misplaced stuff in the wardrobe, as we both were very disciplined, ok, maybe not me, but she was –  I still don’t understand why we just didn’t buy few hangers and use the damn wardrobe!

That was the point when I just wanted to cry, but I didn’t, maybe because I had a much mature roommate to look upto, who moved on as nothing ever happened – after all, her suitcase had suffered the most as it had her more recently bought colorful clothes of orange and yellow (her favorite colors that season) which had left their mark on her light colored tops/kurtis/dupattas!!  She, and therefore I, knew, we just had to face it and get going.. I took 3 days off and she did too.. I don’t remember exactly when power was restored back…Chechi ensured that her house-help cleaned the house before we moved back in on Monday, but we both knew, life in that house would never be the same-old-same-old for both of us! Every little thing that was on the ground (even our chappals) found a spot few feet above the ground! The bottom few shelves of our kitchen, wardrobe, TV stand, super cute dressing table drawers etc etc always stayed empty in future!

A new-normal had taken form!

The house flooded again, during heavy rains in December 2005, but, we were already prepared!