the flood gates opened. into my house.

Yesterday, it rained.  I was ecstatic when I saw the dark clouds approaching, because it made my house so nice and cool.  And we needed rain - I don't think it had rained since January, and it looks as though monsoon may be late this year.  Around 5.20pm the rain started.  I had almost forgotten what a beautiful sound rain makes.  I simply sat for about 10 minutes just listening to sound of it and inhaling that wonderful fresh smell.

Then the power went out.  It usually does when it rains heavily, so it wasn't much of a surprise.  I got up to have a wander around to see how badly the house was leaking [our house is very poorly constructed and has a tendency to leak in random places].  And lo and behold, I found this:

[this is the terrace door. the door on the right is the bathroom. to the right corner are the steps up to the bedroom]

 Water was gushing in from my terrace, and I had no idea why.  Our house is badly built, but I didn't remember this ever happening when Amai and Kishore lived up here.  Luckily Amai called me about something, and when I mentioned what was happening to her, she said that it had happened once before when something had gotten lodged in the drain on the terrace.  So out I ventured into the pouring rain to see if that was the case.  And wouldn't you know, it was.  One of the rods from the drying rack had fallen off and gotten stuck exactly in the drain, so the water had nowhere to go.  I got the rod out and got the water flowing out properly and got myself ready for the task of cleaning up.

[those are the steps up to the bedroom. the sandals usually sit by the terrace door but got washed all the way inside]

 First, I had to scoop as much water out as I could using the mug from my bathroom.  Luckily the floor slopes a slight bit toward the door, so I just stationed myself there and got to work.  After about half an hour, I managed to have it looking like this:

[you might not be able to tell, but trust me, there was a difference. you can also kind of see how the floor slopes]

Then I armed myself with a bucket and a towel and set to work sopping up the rest and wringing it out into the bucket.  All of which I did by the light coming in from outside, because we still didn't have power.  It came back around 7.30, by which time I was mostly done.  Once I finished cleaning up this part, I had to tackle the bathroom, which had caught some of the overflow, after which I finally had a bath myself to scrub off all of the dirt and grime.

And yet, I still won't complain about the rain, because my house was so cool that by the time I slept I actually had to cover myself with a blanket.  First time in 3 months.
xx