Shells-shocks

A oyster in a shell in a frog in a well under a carapace in an ivory tower. That's what living inside the IIT Powai campus has been over the last 4-5 days. True that rains poured into many of the ground and basement floors of some buildings, esp. hostels, and in some cases poured out of lifts. But all this happened only on Tuesday evening. Since then, most of us here have been completely oblivious to what has been happening around.

Having waded through knee-deep waters back to the hostel that night, I was very relieved to find no water had made it through to my ground floor room. The next morning, the waters had drained completely and things seemed normal again. So it came as quite a big shock the next day to find out that such utter devastation had been happening close to the campus, in Andheri, Sakinaka, Santa Cruz et al. In fact, all of Tuesday, we had been worried about the prospect of floods in Pune until that evening.

Same was the case with electricity and water supplies - we have been having them in abundance here. Again, it was an eye-opener when I rang up relatives who told me about many areas suffering from power cuts and water shortages. In fact, last evening, when I walked out to the market outside, I found that power has been missing for the last 12 hours. Truly, living inside the campus has cut me off mentally from the rest. I'm getting all the info from newspapers and from accounts like Gaurav's. Till then, the worst thing that had happened to me that night was that I got no dinner and had to subsist on some biscuits. I feel a little guilty(?) and relieved at having got off so lightly when others have had it so bad, and we didn't know.

Yesterday, this whole tsunami/Powai lake/dam rumour - what a waste of lives! Again, inside the campus, I had no inkling of this whole caper. I guess I'd be among the first to get swept away, but I'm still here.

Visit these group blogs for more info on how the city copes and about useful resources:
Cloudburst Mumbai, Mumbai Help.
Link via Amit