~~ Day 9: Those 90 Minutes ~~

Originally written on Dec 9 2015

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With Chennai bouncing back to normal – let me complete the series that I started on writing my experiences with Chennai Rains…. The PG that I shifted to from the 3BHK monster house was located in T nagar (ohh, I love that place – it is just so full of life) and meant travel time to office in OMR (much lesser than where I used to stay till 2005), but, well, by then, I was ok to trade in the travel time for simple peace of mind! It was a big house with each room transformed into PG accommodation with clean water, good kitchen, we-may-not-be-best-buds-but-we-can-be-friends type no-nonsense roommates and at that time, after 4 months of witnessing stupid fights and arguments over nonsense, all I needed was to go back home/room/PG/wherever which should just bring peace after a long tiring day at office, which I got there in abundance! After all, what good is a big 3 BHK house if you cannot go back to it at the end of the day and relax! I probably stayed there only for about a month before I flew onshore, but well, I knew in my heart that whenever I would return, this place would be first preference! True to my words, I chose to stay there when I returned and I stayed there till I shifted to Bangalore on account of my marriage…

Now coming back to the actual topic, no, this house/PG never flooded! It so happened that I had to be in office for one of the critical weekend production release support on one rainy Saturday in December 2009 – We were provided with cabs for our return back home in the evening & a team mate was with me in the cab when we started back…It was already about 7pm when we started and the cab driver took all the shortcuts on the OMR to avoid the signals & to get us back home quicker, and that’s when in one of the innocent no-street-light shortcut, our cab just charged accidentally into what was stagnant rain water and got stuck there.. We were stupid to think of it as stagnant, only, it was raising every minute… I remember the look on my team mate’s face as he looked at me, his supposedly always calm & composed lead (yes, that’s me), talking otherwise about job abends, compiling code, reviews, unit tests, task management and risk management and stuff, now, constantly pestering the cab driver anna to start the car, trying to call the transport committee and asking the driver anna to just get the hell out of the place as the water would soon be gushing inside the vehicle…that team mate of mine must have been laughing hysterically(in his mind, of course), but he was careful enough not to “actually” laugh at the so-close-to-panic-me! Car was not budging to start, my concerned team mate was trying hard to talk some nonsense so I don’t panic or something, but well, I was not listening, with folded legs, clutching my bag, I was looking at the trickling water in the car, which soon turned to rushing water, which would anytime reach my seat… The poor cab driver anna did every possible thing he could to start the car, he tried to move the car to a nearby elevated house verandah so the water doesn’t get in the car, but the car wouldn’t start, nor move, he called the transport committee and arranged for another cab which could pick us at the end of the road (they wouldn’t come to our car as they feared that they will get stuck too).. After about what felt like half an hour, but mostly should have been just few minutes, we got a confirmation that another cab was on the way and we should try to make it to the end of the road…I was adamant that I would not step into the water, but, when the water was ready to encroach our seats, I gave in and we stepped into the dark murky waters with our bags/sandals/shoes and stuff in our hand..  

I remember walking for 45 minutes to 1 hour, barefooted, stones and stuff on the road hurting our feet, in knee deep dark water, on a no-street-light-road, the driver leading our way –  I remember fearing for any open potholes, fearing for creepy crawlies, fearing for any unknown creature that might have travelled from someplace unknown, just waiting for that unguarded moment to attack us(too many Hollywood movies, I know),! I remember keeping myself patient enough not to snap at that poor team mate of mine who was just blabbering something or the other, either to help me not panic or probably he was doing so as he was in his own panic mode…I don’t remember replying to his blabbering’s, but I definitely do remember telling him that I’d blog about this experience .... And then, after what seemed like walking forever, we finally saw, the light at the end of the tunnel – the headlights of the vehicle that had come to pick us.. our pace quickened and we covered the last few steps much faster than how we had started thereby finally ending the ordeal …  

Hmmm, a chill still runs down my spine when I think about these experiences in Chennai, a place where I would have understood the possibility of heat strokes, but definitely not the floods! Why is it that these pains still prevail from so many years in such a beautiful place, and from what I have come to read of it, its worsening every year, this year being the worst of all, well, I will never understand!!