Tuesday, August 29, 2017

It's the same story, as usual.

Kept getting details of the miseries, owing to the deluge in Bombay, from friends. Sample a few:-

   (a) "Am stuck at my house at Antop Hill. My wife is at her office and will remain there for the 
         night. My son, who's at Dadar, has been asked walk over to my sister-in-law's house at Lower
         Parel and spend the night over there".

   (b) "My daughter's flight was at first diverted to Ahmedabad but later, had landed at Bombay. She's
         unable to move out of the airport and will stay there for the night. Better than what it was in
         '05, when she was 7 yrs old, we didn't know her whereabouts because of the breakdown in
         communications! At least now, we track her movements thanks to the internet".

    (c) "Me and Jaggu were caught in the Bombay traffic but we, somehow, managed to crawl out of it
          and reach our houses at Pune after more than eight hours!"

Have just shared the messages sent by three of my friends about the situation arising out of the ongoing rains in Bombay. I was reminded about the '05 disaster. I was on a flight from New Delhi to Bombay to attend back to back meetings at Bombay and Kochi. The flight was refused permission to land at Bombay and was diverted to Ahmedabad, finally landing back at New Delhi that very same night. Lekha was surprised to see me because I was supposed to return after five days!

What makes me feel bad is that the Bombayites are made to go through the same difficulties that they'd experienced way back in '05. Sad!

         *                                   *                                       *

It's pouring out here though it's not of the same intensity as it's in Bombay. Consequently, I'd dropped the idea of going to the bank to pull out some money for our monthly expenses. Later felt guilty about that because Jayakumar, the manager of my bank, had called up to say that it was his last day in office as he was going off to the zonal office at Ernakulam, at Menaka, on promotion and transfer. I, however, did tell him that I'd be missing his smiling face and thanked him for being the help that he was during his tenure.


Tailpiece.

These days I browse through the pages of my diary of last year to go through my mom's last few days. We're hurtling towards that fateful day without the knowledge of the impending catastrophe.    

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