When RAIN do us apart....

Its a nice warm day, I have finally secured a job in Air India after waiting and losing hope for more than a year and finally on July 26 I am to report to duty...and then all hell broke loose
....its 11:45 now and raining real bad, we are seated in a mock up plane but we cannot budge out of the location, as the water is pouring in...I have never seen such rains in Bombay...so we go up and sit in the business class lounge of the air craft
...Its 3:30 now, every office in Bombay is officially closed. We have been told to go home however! A few people venture out boldly in their cars ignorant of pleas from other employees to give them a lift...as fate would have it, in 5 minutes every car returns back...BOMBAY IS A WRECK!
...4:30 I and my friend trudge out leaving all our valuable documents behind, we are drenched, rain is now pouring in buckets and each drop of rain falls on us like a small pebble. Its very cold and when our shirts stick on to our body we are literally shivering. We wade through the water which is now waist deep, we fall down at times, reach his aunt's place, the entrance of which has me covered upto my chest and I'm 6'3!!!He is home and now I trudge along, I dont really know how long I walked, the only thing in my mind was WALK NO MATTER WHAT. Yea I did manage to see 2 Mercs, one floating in the water and the other left along in the roads at nature's mercy...I somehow managed to reach my relative's place after walking for 3 hrs and 15 minutes
...27th of July:All fine till now, I am in the confines of a very comfortable house, eating and sleeping but still without the luxury of electricity and no knowledge of what's going on around me...As news start pouring in, I realise I am in one of the worst affected areas, my area has virtually become an island with water way over 90 cms all over, and some areas a lot more than that
...3:00 pm - I feel restless here and want to go home, afterall there is nothing like home...so I tell them I am going, they relent after I am firm on my decision, 10 minutes into my decision, I regret it, I am covered with water upto my hip, The water isnt exactly Evian or mineral water quality, no one cared..As I waded through muck, brown water and a lot more water, on the way of which I found a few titled cars and vans, vehicles rammed by other vehicles, trees toppled over and every private and public transport vehicle deserted of its passengers and drivers, I realised my worst nightmare come true. I had 2 ways of reaching home, one was completely cordoned off by the water and the other which I was in, had me walk across a railway station, I used the divider to walk across, and found the tracks completely submerged in the water, and if all this wasnt hell itself, as i stepped down on the other side of the station, a few feet away were dead bodies, the water was chest high again, but this time it didnt matter, we were at the mercy of nature and had given in.Time had stopped, some time later I reached the high way: trucks, cars, vans, bikes, buses, everything on wheels was stranded from one corner to the other. There were people selling food items trying to make a quick buck, another corner there were people offering water and tea for free.Yes the spirit of mankind sometimes exceeds every expectation.I reached home at 6:45, too tired to speak or do anything, I wanted to wash myself, there was no water, no electricity as yet, so the water pump could'nt function. WATER WATER EVERYWHERE, BUT NOT A DROP TO DRINK. I managed to change my clothes, and plopped to my bed.11:30 I get up and my girlfriend who had been frantically trying to call me finally gets through, she doesnt wan't to keep the phone down
.....11:45 Finally the elctricity board wakes up and we get electricity back, good clean water finally comes in.28th of July:Our phones are still jammed but life is slowly coming back to normal, No Office today. This is my story, the millions of people in Bombay will have a different story to tell, some more sombre some more pitiful, but never has bombay's spirit and resilience been tested more in such a large scale.