Water is the Enemy...

I have realized that water is the biggest aggressive enemy I have. Some of you may remember the post when I dived headfirst into a swirling rain water drain ( http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2007/05/bangalore-rains.html ). But what the water Gods have been doing to me over the last few days has been terrible, just absolutely terrible. And eventhough I try to maintain a cheerful view to life, sometimes its just not possible.

14th August, that wonderful day when I was supposed to land in Delhi, get picked up from the airport by PS and R, proceed to a rollicking party in Gurgaon, is when my tale begins. Its not for the fainthearted so read on at your risk. The only thing I can guarantee is that not a single eye would remain dry on reading about my plight.

I joyous Swapnil took the flight from Bangalore airport (incidently, the new airport is phenomenal and I for one think that the long drive to reach it is worth it. It brings back some stateliness to flying again. In the middle I think flying was becoming more akin to boarding a bus with no happiness and romance left with it)

I landed in Delhi in the worst jam ever caused by, what else, torrential rains. After waiting for an hour for the luggage to come out I waded into a sea of people carrying huge amounts of luggage as well as ankle deep water. The water Gods then played another cheap trick with me. Now PS and R were stuck in traffic coming from Gurgaon and somewhere near the airport they took a U-turn and I was supposed to walk out or take an auto to reach their car. The rain Gods suddenly stopped the rains and gullible that I am I walked out. Almost immediately it started pouring like crazy and I ended up soaked to the skin sitting under a small tree with a raincoated policeman of Haryana police with a wicked looking gun waiting for the rain to stop. I waited and waited but the rain did not let up.

There was no chance of reaching R's car and so reluctantly we decided to cancel the party plan as there was no way they could've rejoined the wall of traffic oozing glacially towards the airport. By the end of the night they had been in bumper to bumper traffic for 4 and a half hours that night. It should ideally have taken 20-25 minutes to reach the airport from where R stays in Gurgaon.

My tale of misery was not over though as I waded through water to reach the nearest terminal where I had to request B and his wife to come pick me up at 12 at night and had to crash at their place. In the morning B, who was already under the weather a bit, fell quite ill and I felt quite guilty about contributing to it. The entire long weekend went in bed for the poor chap.

As if that was not enough water was still running its vendetta when I came back.

I reached back to Bangalore yesterday night at 1. It was raining quite heavily and though I avoided it by taking a taxi instead of a shuttle service, I should've known that I couln't avoid its wrath so easily. But I had no premonition and no clue that it was going to launch a sneaky guerilla attack at me!

It had rained so much over the last week in Bangalore that when I walked into the basement garage this morning all excited about going to work after a long vacation (yeah, right...) I found myself wading through ankle deep water.

But that wasn't even the beginning of my troubles.

As I opened the door and sat inside I realised that there was a rather peculiar smell in the car. The smell of stale, stagnant, dirty water. Over the past week water leaked into the carand pools of it were lying casually in my beautiful beautiful hard earned car. Apart from the smell and decidedly dreadful looks of the carpeting, the central locking, air-conditioning and most dangerously the brakes were shot.

Not a great start to my new year (It was my birthday yesterday. I had great fun in Delhi. Thank you :) )

Now, someone tell me how to apprease ze water Gods!

Bangalore rains...

We interrupt normal programming about Manali due to exceptional circumstances.

Friday evening, a bit of rain decided to fall on Bangalore. And thus begins my saga, its not a pretty fairytale and I would warn the feeble hearted to turn back now - I shall not take any responsibility for the mental trauma you may face because of continuing.

So you insist on tormenting yourself, well, then read on- let it be on your head.

I took my regular office shuttle and got down at my regular spot. And there, a little bit of rain and water clogging happens at all places in Bangalore. And there it was the roads had some one and a half feet of water. The so called sidewalk was also submerged under a similar head of water.

Arrrgghhh, I said to myself (yes, remarkably articulate I am when conversing with myself), rolling up my trousers a bit I started to nimbly leap from dry spot to dry spot (Bangalore sidewalks have stones sticking up at angles. The edges of these sometimes provide relief from the rising floods. Yes, we live in a third world country. Yes, our infrastructure sucks....so whats your point exactly?). However, I failed to take cognizance of one fact- there is an open drain running behind the sidewalk.

Well the rest you can imagine- one moment I was walking nimbly on my toes trying to avoid water leaking into my shoes, and the next I saw murky water all around me with bubbles escaping from my nose. Yeah, i'd stepped into the drain and had fallen headlong. I got submerged for a second or two, and God, it was bloody scary.

Fortunately I didn't get hurt (Aww man, what needs to be done to shut him up. He falls in a drain, gets submerged and still doesn't get hurt. Man, just when we were getting our hopes up.....yeah, thanks so much, you're such good pals...bleh). But, my current status is kind of terrible. My laptop has been lying open with a fan running for the last two days in a hope that water would dry up and it recovers. I hope the technical guys in office can retrieve the data, or else i'm sooo screwed.

My super cool Imate PDA phone is with the repair guy- and he told me that he'll let me know IF the phone can be repaired...aaarrgghhhh..the suspense is killing me.

I also had some office work which hasn't been done as well as I would've wanted because of this mishap.

Anyway, please put your palms together and pray that my phone and laptop recover :(