What Gurgaon’s rain claimed in my house

Soggy clothes, ruined rugs and wet gadgets – as it poured cats and dogs in Gurgaon, residents of areas like Belvedere Park, Sushant Lok and DLF Phase III were left battling rain water that flooded into their homes and wrecked many a costly item.
Expensive winter coats and quilts left dripping wet
Bindu Khanna, a resident of Belvedere Park, says, “We were away for a holiday in Kashmir when the rains hit Gurgaon.When we landed at the airport on Sunday and saw the water logging there, we already feared that our basement must be full of water. When we reached home and ran to our basement, our guess was right. The basement acts like a storehouse, so our quilts, expensive woollen clothes and coats which were in cartons were full of muddy water. The whole basement had to be emptied and I took all the clothing to the drycleaner. When I reached there, they said that a lot of people had already come to them with the same problem that day.”
From rugs to rags
Richa Makhija, a resident of Sushant Lok II, tells us, “I stay with my family on the ground floor, but we have never had problems with rain water. But yesterday, because there is Metro work going on outside my house, everything’s dug up, so the drains were blocked. As a result, rain water came rushing from below our doors. My maid and I kept rolling up the carpets and pushing our furniture to the side. But all that required a lot of effort and before we could do much, one of my expensive Persian rugs worth `18,000, was ruined. We don’t even allow anyone to step on the rug with shoes on. I have put it out to dry now, but it doesn’t have the same sheen anymore.”
Books turn to papier mache
Medha Kapoor, who stays in DLF Phase II, shares, “My living room has mattresses and cushions for low seating, and as luck would have it, I had dumped my books on them because my room had no space. When I came from work on Sunday and saw my neighbours draining water from their houses, my heart raced as I ran to my apartment, which is on the ground floor. About 20 to 30 books were all in a puddle right in the middle of my house. Some of those books were worth `1000-1500 each. I managed to dry up a few, but many were so soaked that the pages had come off. I am a voracious reader and since I like to read the same books over and over again, the loss upset me.”
Not just raining outside
Prerna Katyal, 27, living in DLF Phase III, says, “I have just moved houses to stay by myself and because of my busy job, I hadn’t got time to unpack everything. I was staying at a friend’s house since I haven’t bought a bed till now, so while I was there, suitcases with my clothes, my work documents and expensive golf shoes were all floating in water in the new house. I stay on a terrace flat, so the water had seeped in from the kachcha roof. By the time I came home, everything was a disaster. My landlord refuses to take any responsibility for the rainwater pouring inside. I wasn’t aware that such a thing was even possible.”
Floating laptop
Anirudh Khanna, 23, living in Sushant Lok I, tells us, “We are a bunch of young guys sharing a barsati flat, so we have never really cared about what’s lying where in our house. All of us sleep on mattresses on the floor, and our laptops are also kept on them. We were all sleeping till late on Sunday when it was raining outside, and woke up only when the water from the terrace had come inside. It was crazy now that I think of it, because the three of us were running out carrying laptops and pushing our mattresses to God-knows-where. Having the mattresses and the clothes that were strewn around drenched was inevitable, but my laptop slipped from my hands during the chaos of saving everything else. It’s going to cost me `3000 to get it fixed now!”