Waterlogged Memories

Since the time I was a small child, I have had a fair share of water while living in a flood-prone area of India. These are some of my experiences, drawn from a lifetime of living with the rise and fall of the water.

Part 1: The Innocence of a Rising Tide

Until I was 20, I lived in a joint family with my uncle, aunt, cousins, and grandparents on my paternal side—a very common living arrangement in India. Our home was a two-storey house, crowned with a small balcony on the top floor that gave a sky view of the entire nearby area. All the bedrooms were on the first floor (the floor just above the ground), while the kitchen, dining room, living room, and other common areas were on the ground floor.

My very first memory of a flood is tied to my great-grandmother (Badi-Dadi). She used to stay in a room on the ground floor, right next to the entrance. I have a scene imprinted in my mind of my Badi-Dadi sitting on her cot as water rushed in. She hadn’t noticed it, but I did. In an instant, people swarmed in to help her, beginning the frantic process of moving things upstairs as the water slowly rose. A perk of my mild hyperthymesia, I suppose, is that I still remember some of those moments in vivid detail. I don’t recall every face, but I remember the incident itself and the feeling of that day.

I remember seeing the water rise, creating small collections of water where my cousins and I would throw things in, just to see how big of a “SPLASH” it would make. On another one of those rainy days, my mom taught me how to make a paper boat. We put it in a tub of water to watch how it floated—a small, simple joy, as even though it was pouring outside, it was harder to collect rainwater than to just get water from the bathroom.

Part 2: The Great Flood of 2019

During my early teenage years, I witnessed some minor floods, but none were as profound as the ones in my late teens. In the 2010s, there were two such major incidents. The first, in the middle of the decade, left knee-deep water for days. I remember it well because my dad got a new bike that year and brought it home during the aftermath.

But the second one, I have a much deeper recollection of.

It was October of 2019. I was in Class 11, and the flooding that followed the rains ultimately led to me getting dengue. This illness caused me to miss my school’s village excursion—they called it the Rural Immersion Programme (RIP), a week-long trip where students would stay in a village and participate in various activities.

This time, the flooding started in the middle of the night. Our house servant, who slept downstairs, felt the cold water rushing across the floor. He woke with a start and immediately shouted to alert us upstairs. I was sleeping in my room, separate from the other three bedrooms, and woke a little later to the commotion. It was nearly midnight and completely dark outside. Using our lights, we could see the water already covering the ground floor.

That sleepless night, we waited, watching the water escalate. Once it reached our cautionary limit, the scramble began. We moved the entire kitchen up to my room—the stove, gas cylinders, appliances, and utensils. We shifted the sofa from the front room to the living room, which was somewhat elevated, up a short flight of three stairs. We put the fridge on a pedestal to keep it above the water. Soon, however, these efforts proved useless as the water rushed even higher than those three steps.

We were marooned for almost four days. During this time, we had limited access to food and water. The motor that bored water from the ground was submerged and useless, and electricity was spotty at best. Sometimes, a few brave souls would venture out to find supplies. We spent most of our days on the balcony, watching the water, or on the rooftop, looking out at the submerged surroundings and talking to neighbors from one building to the next.

Part 3: The Strangeness of a Flooded World

Life during a flood has a strange rhythm that many might not relate to. Since it was a problem for everyone, a new kind of commerce emerged. We would see sellers of vegetables and other essentials pushing their carts through the murky water to make a sale, as for them, the flood meant a complete stop to their livelihood. The streets, normally filled with cars and rickshaws, were now navigated by boats brought in from the port by people who could suddenly traverse the city in a way they never could before.

I vividly remember when one of our neighbors fled the city. Even though their house was one of the highest in the area, the inability to access daily facilities must have been too much. We all watched the commotion as they brought in a tractor with massive wheels to escape the waterlogged city and head for higher ground.

From our rooftop, we could see helicopters delivering food crates to the most resource-deficient areas. Boats also distributed food packets, though I don’t remember getting any, haha. The days of the flood gave us time to wonder about things we normally wouldn’t. It packed people together, forcing us to find new ways to entertain ourselves.

Part 4: A Walk Through Water and a Wading Epiphany

Water in this form has taught me many things. The old idiom, “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,” takes on a profound, literal meaning during these times. It also gives us city dwellers a mere glimpse of a self-sustained life, one more commonly experienced in villages or in times long past.

I’ve learned a lot from floods, though none of it has been about how to stay safe. I still enjoy getting out and feeling the water. Even as I write this, we have just survived another flood. This deluge was shorter, but still a story to tell.

I was at my Nani’s (Maternal Grandmother’s) house. On the second day of my stay, it started raining heavily through the night. I was awake, working on something, and even with noise-canceling earphones, I felt the house vibrate multiple times from thunder so loud it resonated through the structure. In the morning, the rain hadn’t stopped. The street in front of the house was already submerged in half-a-knee-deep water.

I needed to get back to my own house, but finding an Uber was difficult. Finally, one driver accepted. After navigating the car through the waterlogged streets to pick me up, I said my goodbyes. We drove for a little more than a kilometre before the car started giving out smoke. The driver said he couldn’t go any further.

I got out and stood on a high side of a road that was otherwise submerged. The Uber app was no help. After 15 minutes of contemplation, I had an idea: Let’s go back.

I rolled up my pyjamas above my knees, held my bag with my electronics tight to my shoulder, and started walking back through the water. It was a foul concoction of everything you can imagine on Indian streets: sewage, cow dung, garbage. The path was treacherous, uneven, and slippery. And yet, despite all of this, I loved the experience of that kilometre-long wade.

It made me realize and think about what is, to me, the most important thing in life.

As no one truly knows what life is about, it doesn’t matter what you do. What matters more is that in whatever you get to do, you learn something from it.

I know this feels a bit incoherent and I don’t know why I felt the need to write this, but I felt like sharing some of these life experiences from my journal. Might elaborate on this in an upcoming account.

Thank you for reading.