Bangalore, Bengaluru rather, over the past week or so, has been experiencing extreme rains, and commute from any place to any other has become difficult, unless a person is clad in shorts (or disposable pants) and has either waterproof footwear (or none at all) and doesn’t have any electronic items on his/her person, failing which the person should ideally be on the top level of a double-decker bus.
If none of the criteria are met, the aforesaid person can get disastrously wet and so far as I know, there exist no double-decker buses in Bangalore, so jai is bound to happen.
The lovely office that I work at is situated behind RV College of Engineering, just off Mysore Road. One has to take a left turn off the main road and then get to this place. The one point that needs to be mentioned here is that the sewage river that is characteristic of south/south-west Bangalore runs in parallel along Mysore Road and our office is just beyond this river.
The two approach roads from Mysore Road to my office campus pass via two bridges, which, due to some unfortunate twist of fate, seem to get inundated each time the rain falls beyond a certain prescribed level, thereby laying us under seige.
Friday evening, when I had to head back home to Mysore, the rain Gods unleashed at half past three, and it rained continuously for the next two hours, with the rainfall abating to a light drizzle for a short duration afterward.
There were no crazy employees who wanted to throw caution to the wind and ride out on their private transport towards any of their respective destinations, given the bad state of affairs that the roads would be under, due to severe flooding, and as a consequence, I was not able to hitch a ride from anyone towards the main road.
Without any other options, I had to walk towards Mysore Road, which was a good 1.5 km away, at the very least, and I jogged the distance, so as to make it in good time.
The traffic jam that was expected on Mysore Road towards Bangalore had commenced, and this meant that there was no public transport available either way, due to the deadlock in traffic.
Faced with no option but to head towards the Kengeri railway station on foot, I began my slow jog, with my luggage on my back. Having rolled up my jeans, wearing some chappar chappals, I trudged through ankle deep waters with questionable content that I chose not to bother about and managed to reach Kengeri station, and out of breath for having jogged the best part of four km, significantly wet and tired as well.
After having purchased my ticket, I rushed out towards the railway tack only to find that the train I was to board had arrived at platform 3 and I knew, based on previous experience that the train wouldn’t halt for more than a couple of minutes.
Usually a cautious person by nature, who always uses the foot over-bridge due to an inclination to follow the rules to a T, combined with a completely unwarranted feeling of pseudo-elitism, this time, it was a matter of making it to the train by hook or crook, and I ran and scooted across the tracks directly and ran three-quarters the length of the train to reach the reserved compartment, the only one where guaranteed seating space would be available.
Sweating profusely, carrying my baggage that was beginning to weigh me down as the effects of adrenaline seemed to be receeding from within me, I knocked frantically at the door of the compartment that was being closed just as I ran towards it. The frantic knocking was a result of my being apprehensive of missing the train, and the person who knocked it yelled back at me, asking me to hold onto my gonads.
He opened the door, and with much fanfare, I strode in- wet, sweating, carrying my stuff, clad in chappals with my jeans rolled up halfway to my knees, my long hair covering half my face, and I can imagine it to be quite a sight – some chappar techie-hippie cross, completely dishevelled and in an agitated frame of mind, and I imagine this not, but there was this significant silence in the train, that was akin to a truant student entering class, expectantly waiting to be admonished by the teacher, but none of this happened as I managed to get a seat for myself.
The running was an actual high, and I felt like Forrest Gump, and during certain occasions, I even tried running in the same style that I have seen being done in the movie, which I reckon, must have been quite entertaining for those people, for whom I was a passer-by.
In the commotion to catch the train, I figured out that I lost my company ID. Ah well.
Full fun in the rain.
