A Stormy Night

Suggestive title eh? I know! But, if you’re expecting any amount of sensually gratifying content in the ramble ahead, then please be prepared to be brutally thwarted in hope! It contains inordinate amounts of rant and rave more than anything else. The title is just a bait! So, now that you’ve taken the bait, swallow it! Well, in this case ‘Read it’!

With that cautionary beginning, I shall get right down to the nitty-gritty of the two ‘R’s I’ve promised.

For a full week ending last Friday, our little god-forsaken town in the purportedly ‘perpetually bright and sunny’ State of Florida, was physically abused (yes, you read that right!) by the whimsical weather. I stand testimony to the fact that this region of the US is not unfamiliar with Nature’s concepts of ‘rain’ and ’storm’. It all began Thursday, March 26th. It rained and rained into late Sunday night. Then on Monday morning, the sun showed his face fleetingly. Just as we prepared to do the Mayan sun-dance in his praise, he got mobbed by the dark menacing clouds again. The clouds opened up, and it rained. It rained on and off without a moment of sunshine until the evening of Thursday, April 2nd, when the gods seemed to have lost it completely! The weather went insane! The met. dept. issued warnings through emails and other media, of a tornado and a severe thunderstorm. On the pretext of bad weather, I skipped work and stayed home.

At around 5.30-6 pm, I was rambling away on the phone with my clique. The sky roared and growled warning us mortals of the acute indigestion the clouds were having and then before we knew it, they threw up! The winds lived up to their unpredictability – whirlwinds were everywhere! The usual havoc ensued; fallen trees and power lines, blocked roads, and worst of all – power cuts! I was updating my friends on the goings on when the entire neighborhood blacked out (My first brush with ‘power cuts’ in the US, a long one at that!)! The cops and other service personnel drove around warning us to stay inside, seek refuge in an elevated location.  Our apartment is located in a trough and is vulnerable to flooding. So, my roommates and I decided to head to campus. We made a couple of calls to friends to arrange for a ride. We noticed we weren’t the only ones who had the brightest of ideas! (:|) A few calls later we found ourselves riding to campus amidst howling winds and piercing rains. We went straight to our roomie’s lab which was on the second floor of the CS dept. building.

About an hour later, the showers eased off a bit. The downpour wasn’t as heavy as they had begun, but the winds still blew strong. We were both starving and had to feed ourselves to survive the night. “Subway Zindabad!!’ we decided and stepped out with the one umbrella we had with us. As we walked, the wind came at us with all its love and literally blew us away and ripped our umbrella apart. The only vestiges of the umbrella we held were the staff and the ribs. To add to the irony we chanced upon ‘pyaar-hua-ikraar-hua‘ couples cuddling away under their umbrellas and who was I stuck with? My roomie!! Great!! Soaking wet, we got to Subway and guess what! They were only accepting cash (Great call Murphy!!)! The dash to the nearest ATM wasn’t as helpful in keeping us any drier, if anything, it even soaked the cash we were carrying. We dumped the battered umbrella as we walked out with our dinner. We entered the lab like two soggy, dripping noodles. We logged on from the computers in the lab and updated all friends on the status quo, all of whom had a hearty laugh at the ironies that played out.

The rest of the night was spent in clinging wet clothes on the decadently comfortable study tables with our bags for pillows! Aaah the bliss of sleeping in wet clothes!

8 am. The sun was out shining ever so brightly. It didn’t even seem that a storm had passed the previous night. My roomie and I got up to head home and as we left the lab we saw something which hit us like a lightning bolt – AN UMBRELLA! A black one, against the wall, in a corner, begging to be used! It had been lying there all night, and we went out with that decrepit two-dollar umbrella which died a horrible death leaving us dripping wet! Talk about stormy ironies! Cussing ensued.

At least we were lucky enough to find our apartment and belongings intact after a night of living like refugees. We didn’t have power until late afternoon though. Aah well, at least a peaceful end to a tempestuous night!