Ah, India.. always an adventure..

      The main reason Deepal and I have rented the apartment we have is to be close to his parents. They live on the third floor and we live on the ground floor. For most of the year the ground floor apartment is a nice option mainly because it is very noticeably cooler than the upstairs apartment. It also has a small backyard garden, and overall  for two people it is a nice amount of space.

      There is, however, an inherent risk to any ground floor apartment in Mumbai... and it comes with the monsoon season. Yes, I am referring to the risk of flooding. When we got through the wedding in June during the monsoon season we counted ourselves lucky, and maybe even out of danger. June would have been the worst time because my whole family was staying in our apartment: my mom, sister, brother, and dear friends Bob and Joy. But we made it through June and July, the two worst months. Then along came September. 

       The duo of doom that leads to flooding in Mumbai is hours of heavy rains coinciding with high tide. At high tide the city closes all the drains because if they didn't the sea water would come in. But if it's raining and the drains are closed... Well, the results are in the pictures below: 

Here are a couple of pictures of our living room covered in 3 inches of water.

And this is the front entryway/kitchen area with Deepal's sandals floating happily along in the current created by the water pouring through the front door: 

It only took about 15-20 minutes for the whole house to be covered in water. Ironically right before the water started coming in I had chosen just that moment to take out every mask that Deepal and I own (over 40 masks worth over $1200) and lay them on the floor so I could see what we have. That's when the phone call came from Deepal's mother alerting us that it was high tide and the drains were closed (we were already aware that it had been raining heavily for hours), so we looked outside and saw that the parking area was starting to flood. The water still seemed far from the house, and Deepal decided he better move the car to higher ground. Well, in the time it took him to move the car and come back the entire house flooded, and that was when I had a mad race against the encroaching water to pick up everything in the entire house off the floor... including 40+ masks.. Literally I was pulling things toward the center of the room to give me a few more seconds to pick up the laptops, carpets, mattresses, suitcases, boxes, etc that were on the ground. Deepal came back and couldn't believe that the house was covered in water already. But! I did manage to win the race.. and get everything picked up before it got wet. whew. 

Not to be daunted by a few inches of water, Deepal still engages in our everyday activities of cooking and watching t.v.:

The picture might be a little hard to see, but you can see from the reflection of light on the water that the area outside of the apartment building was completely flooded:

    Here is the first video when the water had only recently covered the apartment:    

    When all was said and done we had about 6 inches of water covering our apartment. We had to put or bed and the refrigerator on blocks. We have almost no furniture in the house, so there wasn't much to put on blocks. Also, anytime the front door needed to be opened all the dirt and debris that was up against our door came in, so the water turned a lovely brown color: 

The next morning we awoke to the sound of our neighbors emptying their houses of water with buckets. Scoop, splash, scoop, splash. Obviously Deepal and I were less than excited to go start the process ourselves. Talk about back breaking labor. But, there is a happy ending to this fairy tale. When Deepal and I opened the door to our apartment.... every drop of water was gone. Our fairy godmother magicked it away with a wand! No actually, it all disappeared through the floor. Went straight on down. When the house flooded, 2/3 of the water came through the front door, but the other 1/3 actually seeped up from the ground under the building. But when the drains opened and the water went down, it provided a very convenient exit point for all the water. woo! So all that was left was a bunch of dirt and leaves, but noo water. And we paid a man to come clean up the dirt, so no hard labor here. let's hear another woo: woo!