When TV sets floated on city streets

NEW DELHI: At the dead of night, the water came twisting through the streets like a dark serpent. Then it rose slowly, keeping residents guessing on whether it would enter their homes. In most cases, it did. Overnight, comfortable homes in upscale neighbourhoods had turned into vast pools of woe.
That was the early morning of September 6, 1978. For a couple of days before the fateful Wednesday, many residents of north Delhi localities such as Model Town, Mukherjee Nagar, Tagore Park and Adarsh Nagar had got word about more than 7 lakh cusec of water having been released from the Tajewala headworks in Haryana.There was an imminent danger of the Yamuna banks giving way. Many took precautions, others dismissed the threat and still others were told their houses were safe.
Deepti Sengupta, a teacher who has since retired, lived with her daughter at M block, Model Town. She had been assured by neighbours that water couldn't possibly enter her house since it was four feet above street level. ``At 2.30am, I was woken up by my daughter. I got off the bed and was standing in water. Our tenant on the first floor rescued some valuables, the rest got submerged,'' she recalls.
Outside, Sengupta saw streams of people wade through flooded streets carrying on their heads charpoys filled with their valuables. "It was an eerie sight. There was a TV set and a refrigerator floating in the water which was everywhere."
For a few others, the surprise was total. Sujit Deb, a resident of Tagore Park, woke up when water was slapping on his cheek. Those who had taken the warnings seriously spent an agonizing night, waiting. Shikha Singh, who lived on the first floor of a house in Model Town, was up all night, listening to the roar of cars speeding out of the colony. ``Then the water started trickling in and consumed everything in sight,'' she says.
Most residents of upscale Model Town didn't really believe their homes could be flooded. When the water came, they hurriedly salvaged what they could. For the next couple of weeks, boats and choppers brought bread, condensed milk and biscuits to the marooned people. Many had set up kitchen on their rooftops. They saw faeces and snakes go into their homes below. ``We could never use the utensils left behind in the kitchen again,'' says Sengupta.
With the water, came rumours. "Government had switched off power supply. There was hardly any way of getting authentic news. We heard there was more water coming in. Thefts increased as residents had abandoned their homes. On several nights we heard shouts of 'chor, chor'," says Manisha, a potter by profession, whose house in Tagore Park was on the edge of the flood zone.
Manisha likens those days to the time of the anti-Sikh riots in 1984. ``In both cases, there was the fear of the unknown. A paranoia stemming from not knowing what was happening around us."
Apocryphal tales did the rounds. According to one, a rich grain merchant had stocked up sacks of gram (chana) in the basement of his house. In the floods, the gram swelled and burst through a wall.
While the floods were bad, the post-flood period was worse. Says Sengupta, ``When we returned to our house, the stink was all pervading. It remained for weeks. I've had breathing problems ever since. Disease was rampant. Everything in the house was muddy. And for months after the floods, we bought foodgrain from Kashmere Gate, fearing that the neighbourhood shops would be selling flood-affected stuff."
Around 2.5 lakh people were affected by the deluge. Twenty people lost their lives and damage to property was estimated at Rs 16 crore (1978 prices). Telltale signs of the great flood were to remain for years -- a line on the wall marking the water level or creased pages of salvaged books.