Floods and more...

So it happened once again.....a repeat of July 26, 2005...a date etched in memory...30 June 2007 adds to that long list of days when Mumbai got completely flooded. Luckily it being a saturday I didnt have to worry about making it to office...but i had plans.

Woke up & saw the road outside our building was flooded with water about a foot deep; decided it was gonna be a hopelessly rainy day and abandoned all hope of venturing out! Living room had a mini (or not quite that mini) lake forming away, bro's systems spread across the living room floor were all floating in water. He of course was non-plussed, dont worry they wont get spoiled by the water he said & went right back to sleep. Theek i thought, his systems he ought to know better.

Got a bucket & cloth & went a mopping away. Water was stinky, so loads of dettol was added by me to disinfect it (courtesy of Tangy who thinks water pools means public toilet for cats & happily goes ahead with nary a thought for the poor soul who has to do the clean up job...this is usually the bai...but with the floods I didnt think she'd be coming in) One should have some easier, less back breaking way of mopping up water.......I had thoughts of vaccum cleaners (one of those high-tech ones...I've seen on TV...dont quite know if they're sold here) which suck up liquids......how i wish i had one. Of course I dont, thought of getting a mop with those long handles.....definitely will get me one of those.

The rest of the day was spent watching the news with pictures of various flooded parts of the city, thanked god at least we're not on the ground floor. So many people had water in their houses, washing away their belongings.......that surely makes you wanna kill someone. Imagine their despair, it was so sad.

Just rescued my phone charger from Pinks, happily chewing away at the ends & playing with the chord (I only have 1 of those......its definitely not a cat toy) She just gave me one of those, what the hell (cat look, only they can manage to look so non-guilty even after being caught red-handed doing something they arent supposed to)

Sorry, back to the floods.....anyway the whole day was spent in reading, sleeping, watching TV. The dull rainy weather didnt raise the spirits any, just felt dull all day long. For all 4 cats it was just another snoozy day, spent sleeping away as usual.

The forecast was for more rain in next 48hrs......how nice...some more mopping up for me to do.

Luckily Sunday hasn't been as rainy; but a dull day nevertheless. Finished reading Kafka on the shore by Murakami; have been reading it for a while now. It has 2 parallel stories of this 15 year old boy who runs away from home to get away from his father and of Nakata this elderly gentleman who had a incident as a child which has left him unable to read, but can converse with cats.

Book started off well enough, I loved the parts where Nakata is finding a missing cat by asking neighborhood cats about the missing one. Kafka's storyline was very interesting too with him travelling to find himself, learning more about himself in the process. Growing up, making new friends. But somewhere the story kind of gets very mixed up with a 15 year old's sexual desires blurring the lines between reality & dreams. I can understand a 15 yr old desiring a girl his own age, but desiring a woman in her 50's no matter how wonderfully young she seems to be was to me a bit too far fetched. And he suspects her to be his mother, yet imagines himself to be her long-lost love and her lover was beyong surreal.

John Updike has called this book a "metaphysical mind-bender" I feel the book just left me confused; Kafka never meets Nakata which I felt was rather disappointing after the whole book seems to have been gearing up for a meeting between the two. I loved Nakata as a character, he is very lovable, very simple and talks about himself in the third person. His conversations with cats are very amusing.

Saw 2 very different but nevertheless nice movies over the weekend; The Inside Man on sat night on HBO. Clive Owen (amazingly handsome as always, what a voice!) Denzil Washington and Jodie Foster. Very interesting movie about a bank robbery which is not quite what it seems. Great storyline & good direction by Spike Lee make for a very entertaining film. Guess what the title track was........ Chaiya Chaiya by Sukhvinder.

Must love Dogs was on HBO on sunday afternoon, just happened to see it while channel surfing. Diane Lane & John Cusack in a very cute, romantic comedy. Not so great a story, typical one of being set up by family/friends, mixed up situations getting resolved in the end in typical filmy fashion. Good acting by all was the saviour, Christopher Plummer as her dad was very charming.