The Great Flood

Sarah Das Gupta

Word Count 1038

By the late afternoon, it was still raining. This was no ordinary rain. This was the Indian monsoon in Kolkata, in Ballygunge to be specific, in the south of the city. When I returned after lunch from my teaching job, our street was already up to my knees in water. The taxi driver had refused to leave the main road. By the time I reached the steps to the front door of our downstairs flat, my sari was a soaking wet six yards of cotton, clinging to my ankles. The water had already reached the third step and getting into the house was rather like disembarking from a boat in filthy brown water with all sorts of strange debris floating past.

I flip flopped through the house, my sandals oozing water over the mosaic floor. My two young daughters were playing in the back room watching the water rising in the small yard and identifying the assortment of objects floating past.

‘Can we paddle when it comes into the bedroom?’ they chorused.

‘Don’t be silly, it’s not coming into the house.’ I hope I sounded more confident than I felt! The rain was still pounding on the roof. It was as if we were on the front line somewhere being subject to heavy gunfire. 

We stood on the balcony, only a few metres above street level, watching the brown water flowing slowly past. The children counted the strange objects floating by. A sofa hove into sight, its red velvet upholstery provided a relief from the growing expanse of brown sludge. The rubbish dump at the corner of the road, had been lifted from the pavement and floated on the surface, a complete island of vegetable peelings, candle stubs, a stringless tennis racquet, a battered dust pan, a rusty bicycle – all the rubbish and detritus of the city. The most bizarre object we saw in this watery cavalcade was a bedraggled fur coat! Whoever would wear a fur coat in Kolkata? I concluded it must have been a relic of the empire. No one but a deluded British memsahib would own such a garment. It seemed hugely symbolic. The once proud Raj had evolved into this straggly, sodden coat.

The water was now lapping, just below the top step. The kids had already brought out their buckets and spades ready to tackle the deluge. I shut the front door and sat with my back to the rising flood, a Canute-like reaction of defiance and equally ineffective. The moment of invasion could not be deferred.

I first noticed a dribble of water surreptitiously creeping under the front door, as if sneakily inveigling itself into the house. Within minutes the water covered the entire ground floor to a depth of half a metre of thick, brown soup. There were cries of dismay as a toy elephant was trapped under a bed and a much- loved doll was plucked out of the flood. Kitchen equipment: a culinary procession of basins, cereal packets, plastic mugs and plastic gloves, floated jauntily out on the tide, down the hallway and under the cupboards. The motor at the back of the refrigerator coughed, wheezed and relapsed into an ominous silence. The girls had soon found the stinking dirty water was not quite such fun as golden sand or crashing breakers. They were sitting sadly, marooned on the sofa with their favourite toys as a magazine floated by with the latest Bollywood stars, slowly drowning, but still smiling seductively.

By this time, I was seriously worried. My husband, a journalist, was on an assignment In Bangladesh. Accustomed to living on the highest part of the English North Downs, with layers of chalk, I had never experienced even the threat of flooding. My first thought was to get the children out as darkness fell and the water level steadily rose.

Luckily, our landlord and his family lived upstairs. I picked up the two -year-old and grabbed the elder girl’s hand. I foolishly promised to rescue the toys languishing on the sofa. As soon as I opened the side door, a cascade of water rushed in and nearly swept us off our feet. Trapped under the stairwell, the water swirled round, a vortex of smelly, liquid chocolate.

Fortunately, Mr Bannerjee was coming down to see if we were still in the flat. A calm, kind man, rather dominated by his sister-in-law, he immediately picked up Mistha, the elder sister, and turned back up the stairs. I struggled after him with Lekha and a large doll under my arm. The iron stairs had become lethal in the flood and I was very worried that I would slip back into the depths.

I breathed a sigh of relief. We had made it to the second floor. The girls were soon playing with Mr Bannerjee’s young son. The rain forgotten, they were getting out a train set and tooting around the track. 

I climbed up to the flat roof with the landlord. The rain was no more than a drizzle. All the roads we could see were dark canals, gleaming in the street lights. The city had become an eastern Venice. All the roofs along the street were filled with refugees from ground floors. Lanterns gleamed and bobbed about in the darkness. Greetings and commiserations were exchanged across the flooded street.

I decided to make one attempt at foraging downstairs in hope of rescuing a few possessions.

The water was now up to my shoulders. There was no choice, I had to swim around in the dark flat and negotiate a hazardous, underwater world of toys, clothes, chairs, books and various household items. 

I heard Mr Bannerjee’s voice on the stairs calling, ’Come back! The electricity is live and people have seen snakes in the water.’

It was the mention of ‘snakes’ which did the trick. Darkness, water, even electricity, but I drew the line at snakes.

We camped out upstairs for over a week until the water had disappeared. Our flat was the most revolting mess: ankle deep in thick, stinking sludge, the ‘fridge a write off, the white notes on the piano sticking up at all angles, elephants and monkeys with cotton intestines hanging out. A great clear-up faced us.

Sarah is a retired English teacher who taught in UK, India and Tanzania. She lived in Kolkata (Calcutta) for many years. She was married to a Bengali journalist. While in hospital last September, after an accident, she started writing. Outside writing and reading, her main interests are equestrian sports and the countryside. She is 80 years young.