On the 31st of July, when I dropped my daughter off to her badminton class, the skies showed no signs of the devastation they were to unleash in the next couple of hours. As I headed back to pick her up two hours later, it had already begun to rain. By the time I was halfway through, it had turned into a downpour, flooding the streets all the way up to the academy.
As we drove back through the rivers that had started flowing all around, a nightmare started to unfold. Massive jams, people dragging their two-wheelers through the waterlogged roads, young women wading in knee-deep waters in the dark, unable to find a ride back home. After spending three hours on a stretch that took us about 15 minutes to cover, we finally managed to reach the Sohna Road Gate. Another bout of chaos awaited us as cars after cars queued up at the entry, unable to enter the heavily inundated streets. After waiting for an hour, our patience gave up and we decided to take a chance and drove our car into the river. A few meters down the lane, the car which had been running on waterlogged roads for hours, also gave up. It was 10:00 PM. We had no choice but to wade through the waters to get back home which was still nearly a kilometer away. As we trudged through the river, almost blinded by the darkness and downpour, I heard my daughter call me for help. Her foot had got stuck in a pit. The waterlogging, coupled with the rain and darkness only made it harder to get to her rescue. It took all my strength to pull out her foot from the ditch. As we somehow tread further, in what seemed like a never-ending night, I heard a voice call out my name and asked us to get into the car. God had finally sent an angel to our rescue. A resident from Towers was on her way to pick up her daughter who too was stuck at a mall, when she spotted us and saved us from the ordeal.
Our nightmare finally came to an end. But it was a long night for many others who did not get as lucky. Many did not make it back home at all. Three people got electrocuted in another colony while elsewhere, a woman and her child drowned in the flooding. Not to mention the mental and physical agony suffered by thousands of others, plus the financial losses incurred in repairs.
And the story continues… Year after year.
