Rain and Flood

I miss Chennai during rainy days, that too my house. I love the smell of earth or mud whatever you want call it( manvasanai that is how they call it in Tamil). It evokes lot of good memories and which kid doesnt like rain.

My house was in a low lying area so it use to flood a lot when it rains. Flood use to be running water not stagnant water. My dad knew about the flooding in the area before he constructed the house there, so we had a high basement for our house compared to others, it was 4 1/2 feet i guess. The kind of preparation we use to make for going to school would be nice, cover the school bag with polythene cover and carry the school shoes and socks in a polyethene bag and then walk till the point where there was not water then dry the feet put the socks and shoes on. The whole thing has to be repeated when we have to come back home too. Going to school when we have a white uniform without getting dirty was a big challenge by itself. My dads two wheeler choice was also based on the flood water, he had Bajaj M80 which had the silencer higher than a TVS Champs ( those were not the ages for fancy bikes). Usually the flood use to be atleast 1 1/2 to 2 feet of running water, he cannot bring his two wheeler in, he us to park it in his friends house in some what higher area compared to us.

My parents would allow us to play in water one hour a day if it is an holiday during flood. We use to make paper boats, convert any stick into boat and send it, there use to be competition on whose paper boats goes the farthest before it sinks in water. The flood water use to come the stream nearby, thanks to google earth it is actually the source for river Adyar, it is very clean since it is very near to the source. So whenever there is flood water there use to be fishes and obviously snakes around of different colors, I don't know what it is may be it comes from my mom, we were never scared of snakes in water. Another thing what we use to do is try to throw flat stones in water and make it to glide in water. Miss all those days....

Till 2005 December water never entered into the house, but 2005 december it was very very heavy rain from october and almost all the lakes around our area was full and some miscreants broke lot of lakes off( since they have constructed house near the lakes illegaly) and it was high tide in sea that day too, so water was pushed in through Adyar river and with so much water rushing in to Adyar River with breaking of lakes it kind of created a backflow and started circling around our low lying area. When i came home the night before from work, there was hardly any water on the road and in the morning at around 6 water was entering our house, we had to vacate our house. Fire fighters had to be rushed into even more low lying areas with boats to rescue people. It was a bad flood that year and it was the last flood i saw.

And why did write this blog, since it is monsoon season in chennai and it is raining heavily there now