Deluge-I

Prologue
For a very long time whenever somebody asked me how was life I would just shrug, make a sour face and mutter, “Same shit, different day”. Not anymore, however. During the past month many lifetime experiences were squeezed into a space of few days and now I can never complain of dullness. Let me take you back to one month. The day was Monday; the date 7th.Microsoft was to come to our college for campus. And since Microsoft being what it was, banners and festoons fluttered gaily. Those who were eligible to sit in the written had butterflies in their stomach. The rest, including me were just curious observers. All day long, disquieting rumors of water being released from the Ukai dam on Tapti reached our ears. Some low lying areas of the city were also rumored to be under water. But nobody gave much credence to them and certainly nobody thought that the situation would deteriorate. Sure it was raining but for a whole month, there were only three days of sun. But the penny really dropped when the execs could not travel from their hotel 1 km away to our campus due to water. That was when alarm bells started to ring and practically the whole campus flocked to the gates to see how high the waters had risen.


2000 hours
  

The situation looked alarming, but somehow not out of control. The main road from the gates was built on higher ground and the low-lying areas on both sides were inundated. The road looked like a causeway. The lights were out but there were plenty of flashes. Apparently many folks considered it to be a good photo opportunity and were posing for photographs standing ankle deep in water. If only they had known what was to come later, they would not waste their batteries and saved more juice for the coming days.Even though the water level was pretty low where we were standing, what was disconcerting was how the waters advanced millimeter by millimeter with nothing to stop them in the march ahead. The waters seemed to take as much notice of us as an elephant would take of a grasshopper in its way. The water level swiftly became a topic of debate. Many felt that the boys’ hostels would be under water that very night. The girls’ hostel was already in danger. I personally thought that no way was my ground floor room going to be flooded that night. Heck, it might never get flooded. You can never tell. Finding that matters were out of our hands we returned to our dark rooms.

0030 hours


The first and second floor guys had a normal night. But for the ground floor ones, it was a like no other. With two other guys I went out to monitor the water. To our shock the waters had advanced about 50 feet from last. And since water everywhere had the same level. The situation was damn grim. The main flow divided into two and executing a pincer movement around the main building two streams –one from the library side and another from the direction of hostel office joined in front of electrical engineering department.

0315 hours


On another routine check. Feeling like a flood control department man monitoring the level of a river in spate and checking whether the red line is touched. The areas around canteen were under less than 6 inches of water and the mech department could only be reached with wet feet. The labs of mech and civil departments were now threatened. Same could be forecasted for the library and the computer center. In fact, were it not for a higher road between our hostel and the canteen and the absence of a culvert, waters would have long ago entered the hostel compound. Met  a couple of guards who just told us that waters had entered into the ground floor of girls’ hostel and they had just returned from the director’s residence and shifted him lock ,stock and barrel to the first floor. We decided in the light of things that was a good policy as we had computers and even a drop could ruin the things. But could not do much as there was pitch darkness in our rooms.

0500 hours


Woke up from fitful slumber to find the grass outside the balcony sopping wet and the skies dry. This freaked me out and I banged on my neighbor’s door .He agreed that we had better start packing up. Though sometimes I used to look askance at my trunk it was my best friend today and all odds and ends went into it. Hoisted the trunk on the chair, disconnected the pc and tried to grab some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long day……. (End of part I)