In the early hours of September 23, city’s renowned psychiatrist Dr Sudhir Bhave woke up to a thunder and stormy showers. The scary thunders continued to lash the city every few minutes. Between the thunderbolts, he heard an alarm, which had already gone off, but could not be heard earlier. He had fixed the alarm near his old mother’s bed downstairs, so that she could alert him whenever she needed help or in case of an emergency. And this was emergency, for sure. As he sat up in his bed, he felt as if the lightning had struck outside his house. He rushed towards the ground floor and saw that the lower part of the staircase was under water. He immediately realised that the ground floor was flooding. He panicked and stepped into the water to rescue his mother. “My mother is 93 years old. In that situation, she was helplessly waiting for me. I moved towards her bed and, with the help of my wife, I took her to the first floor,” Dr Bhave said while narrating his experience to ‘The Hitavada’. Within no time, he added, the ground floor of his house was completely under water. All the furniture, tables, sofa-set, chairs, wardrobes, refrigerator, grocery, and books got soaked in water.

 

Dr Bhave is a resident of Ambazari Layout, which was worst-affected during the floods as it is situated near Ambazari lake. After heavy rains, Ambazari lake swelled. The water then gushed into Naag river and flooded several residential areas of the city. “My residence is exactly beside Naag river. That particular night, the retaining wall of the river got damaged due to the force of flood water. Water entered our residence through that broken portion of the wall,” Dr Bhave said. As he recalled, the water on the street was almost 6 feet high and all vehicles parked outside were sumberged under water. Both his cars were almost totally immersed in water. According to Dr Bhave, flood water started receding after 12 noon on September 23. The residents were without electricity and food for almost 8-10 hours. His daughter, who lives in another area of the city, arranged food for him and family around afternoon. But, receding water did not reduce their worries. Rather, it threw up a new challenge at them. After draining out flood water, the family found a thick layer of mud everywhere on the ground floor of the house. The flood left almost everything on the ground floor into unusable condition.