Raining Indoors!

Image courtesy: NY Dailynews


When I was in Elementary school, we lived in a home with clay-tiled roof. We shared the roof with sparrows, lizards, crow, and even some mice. We shared the floor with several other critters. Every morning, the sparrows would stir around 4 am with fabulous chirping songs. I loved it! I love it. When I need to do something that requires long hours of concentrated efforts, I play some bird chirping in the background. Our window was fortunately open. Always open for fresh air. It was a cement slab with designs and more holes than the dosa my mother made.

Every monsoon, both the birds and humans were distressed. The pitter-patter on the roof caused water to seep into the birds nest and sometimes it fell down, eggs and all. Distress for both of us. 

During rains, all our books were covered with our raincoats and anything plastic we could find. Now, my books are all over the house. The rolled-up beds was stacked on top of the bench covered with stitched plastic sheets from several rice bags by my resourceful mom. All our buckets were used, as were all the empty vessels from the kitchen, down to the tumbler. Sometimes the water was up to our ankles. Nobody was exempt from work. I remember how our red-oxide floor shone at the end of the washing and mopping. The streaks of rain left their mark on the walls and the soaked tiles took a long time to dry causing some mold to grow on the wood. We have seen mushroom grow on the wood. After one particularly heavy downpour, not a single room in the house was free of dripping. We were out of vessels to hold water. All rags were wet. The thunderstorm continued unabated all through the night. We went to sleep standing.

Next morning, my father went house hunting.

All this came back to me in rush this week when we encountered a similar situation at work. Our roof literally caved in! Water poured. We moved boxes in amazing speed. Mopped floor. Threw the collected water out. And gave a collective sigh of relief when the rain abated...

Will my supervisor go office hunting?

Any guesses there?