Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Monsoon is active ...

That's how the weatherpeople talk on TV. More like hyperactive. The rains let off a bit yesterday in Pune, so the trains to Bombay restarted. The Inter-City express reached Dadar 45 minutes late at 9:30 pm, and then it look me neary two hours to get to the cousin's place in Andheri, of which an hour fifteen was crawling along for the last two kilometers.

Maybe what I mean is I love South Bombay. The suburbs past Bandra could well be marked off on a map with a "Here be dragons (and pot-holes the size of moon-craters)" sign. :-)

The rains in Gujarat have been bad too -- Surat is under water. I have a cousin there: they're stuck in their condo building with twelve feet of water all around, having moved as much of their stuff up to the second (US: third) floor, with the waters within a foot of their apartment. No sign of the brand new car. No electricity or gas for three days now. And, despite all that water, a shortage of drinking water. That was yesterday, after which there's been no further communication. Cell phone batteries died eventually. 80 percent of the city (of about three million) is underwater.

Baroda is dripping wet, though the waters here have receded. The flight circled for about fifteen minutes around a large thunderhead before finding a window and landing.

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