By Jonny Klynkramer (ArtSci ‘ 14)
I’ve said it before: Mumbai is a stressful place. Even after all the day-to-day troubles that abound, it seems as though this city always has one final card up its sleeve that’s solely meant to push a person to their limits.
Take last week for example. I had spent the better part of the day hanging out with Ashwin, my buddy from school. It had been raining since noon and as we sat in his room that evening, we noticed a puddle of water forming at the doorstep. Ashwin looked at me and I just shrugged, so he elected to go inspect the situation.
“Dude, this isn’t good.”
The bathroom and kitchen were both full of water, and that water was beginning to flow over into the bedrooms. That’s when we started to panic.
I instinctively grabbed a bucket floating in the bathroom, and opened window to bail the water out of the house. Ashwin started running around, frantically picking up our electronics and valuables and putting them in the cupboards. The water continued rising and I realized my efforts were in vain; before we knew it we were knee-deep in thick, brown sewer water. Thankfully we managed to store most of our valuables out of harms way.
We had no option but to follow everybody else whose houses were flooded and trudge through the waist-deep water, like a surreal funeral procession. People were carrying bundles of possessions above their heads as they made their way to higher ground and shelter. To my surprise, everybody around me seemed perfectly calm; we even passed a group of kids who were laughing and splashing each other with water. Luckily Ashwin’s grandparents lived a few blocks away and they gladly took us in for the night, giving us warm food and dry clothes. I have never appreciated a shower and dry clothes as much as I did that day.
Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures from the flood, but I do have this video I shot a while back. It gives you a good sense of what the monsoon rains are like.
Dinner in the Dark from Jonny Klynkramer on Vimeo.
By the next day the rains had stopped, the streets had drained and life in Mumbai was back to normal. Apparently floods are common in Mumbai during monsoon season, and would have been more frequent had it not been such a dry summer. Ashwin’s place was eventually drained and cleaned, and besides a few bags of waterlogged clothes and a ruined mattress, everything was returned to its pre-flood state.
So the moral of the story is that sometimes things happen that we just can’t control (a flash flood, for example). All you can really do is keep a cool head, focus on the task at hand and then ride it out. Also, don’t rent a basement apartment in an area prone to flooding. That helps too.
Johnny will be blogging again on Sept. 27. More stressful things to come: transportation, schoolwork and living next to a carnival.
Twitter: @jklynk
Blog: jonnyinmumbai.tumblr.com
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