Submerged Memories

SUBMERGED MEMORIES

                           Apart from a few patient treatments we killed the days of our internship with a huge amount of chitchatting, sleeping and canteen visits.  The only time our bodies received any sort of exercise was when we walked home from college.  That day also all four of us walked home as usual. We halted at our regular lime juice shop followed by our beautiful Nellai stores where I bought a packet of lays ,elsa bought biscuits, anna drank pepsi and priyatha got herself a recharge card. It was no different from  any other day until we reached our street.  I noticed the tall man who usually never brings about any change in his facial expression looks angry today. I could see bloodshot veins appearing one by one in his bulged out eyes as the four of us walked past him.
Further into the street we saw the old grandma who greets us with a smile all the time looking at us from her window. Only difference was that she did not smile today.  Forget smiling, she looked infuriated. Followed by a couple more evil glares from some more neighbours we reached the stairs. Water streamed  through the steps. Anna complimented on how our apartment owner finally decided to get those dirty steps cleaned. As we marched the steps our next door neighbor stood there. It looked like she was waiting for our return. She started yelling at us. She said we always cause trouble and that now we were  wasting water . Since she screams at us from time to time for the silliest of matters we did not really bother replying or trying to understand what she was saying.
                            As we reached our floor all four of froze. We stood in horror for about five whole minutes.What we saw made anna’s face turn pale and priyatha’s jaw drop.  Elsa was breathing heavily and I stood there wide eyed.  It was the sight of water gushing out of our house. I could only remember the scene from titanic where water fills up each rooms of the ship one by one till the roof.  This was the only time I wanted an alien to take me away to their planet. With anxiety amplified to its brim we opened the house door.  We saw our bags floating like ships and suitcases half sunken. Too bad we did not have Moses to split the water into two. One by one we submerged our feets into the ocean inside our house. It took us a while to figure out where the water was coming from.
                               After checking the kitchen tap and the bathroom taps we finalized that it was the washing machine. Anyone who has used a semi automatic washing machine will know what will happen if we forget to close the tap. One of us had forgotten to close the tap which led to this disaster. Without a twinge of guilt we all looked at each other and laughed. We were quite level headed before this but the sight of water everywhere made us lose it. We did regret wasting water. Im sure if this was to happen now we would have worred ourselves with many questions like ‘what will the neighbours think about us?',' Will our house owner scold us? ‘,Will everyone in this apartment run out of water due to this?. Well, we did NOT have any of these questions exploding our minds. We were young. We were careless.
                               The next few hours each of us had mugs and buckets in our hands. Getting the water out of the house was a tedious job. I felt something stroke my toes as I walked into the bedroom. It was my laptop bag. I felt faint. With wobbling hands I pulled it open. Gulp. Almost half of laptop was wet.The other half was dry. I wished to rewind the day so that I can place my laptop on the top shelf.  I sat on the bed staring at my laptop.  Well, I was not the only one who had a bad day. I saw priyatha sitting on the other side of the bed staring at her brand new  white tee which had fusion pink colour from her kurta splashed all over it. It took us about two hours to clear the water from the house. Our house never looked this clean before. Every nook and corner of the house was sparkling. We spread our clothes,bags and books on the terrace to dry.
      The following day we went to college and told about the flood we caused upon ourselves. Our friends burst out laughing. When we reached back home we checked to see if our clothes had dried up. It was only half dry since it was a cloudy day. As we chit chatted away the night it started raining. We talked about how god showered rain today because he knew the amount of water we wasted yesterday. We laughed and giggled. After an hour or so Elsa said” Oh my goodness. We are talking about rain but did we even think about the clothes we left in the terrace?” We ran to the terrace to find our clothes,bags and books dripping wet once again.

Meet the characters of this story -From left to right is me,Anna,Priyatha &Elsa. Till today we do not know who among us had left the tap open. It really doesn’t matter now because this is something we laugh about till today. The photo below is that of our flooded house. This was towards the end of the clearing out water session.