Dial - 101

OK...so power cuts in Koramangala is something as mundane as seeing cute girls/guys on MG road... :)

And as usual, when I returned from office one day I found my entire lane in complete darkness. Fumbling my way to my PG I continued the trail to my room and dumped my stuff. It so happened that there were just two other girls in the PG that day (both of them quite obliviously busy on the phone!)

I promptly lit a candle and settled myself in the Hall with some music. Slowly, the rest of them trickled in, each one complaining about the power and I was tempted to ask: "What else is new?"

So...the junta in the hall increased and each one was quite content to sit around until the power would come back. The usual time frame was 1 to 1.5 hours, so what the heck!

One of the last few to join us was my pal CG (name masked for obvious reasons!) she was quite vocal about the "stupid power problems" and took her time to scream her heart out to us on the same topic. After we managed to calm her down she decided to head to her room for a quickie.

Mai (reason for name: ditto), my other good pal and I were just competing on who had donated the higher content of blood to mosquitoes when we heard someone repeatedly scream: "OH HELL! OH HELL! OH HELL!"

We followed the sound and reached CG standing outside her room with a view through the doorway that literally gave all of us a massive heart-attack! What we saw was the corner cupboard with a mane of fire!!!

On impulse, all of us rushed helter-skelter to collect water in any possible container to douse the flames. After around 20 mins of frenzied activity we finally managed to get things under control. We then stood around in a breathless huddle and the discussion on the fire started:

HOW COME? - Candle
BUT HOW? - Left on top of the cupboard
BUT STILL...HOW DID THE FIRE START? - The top of the cupboard also served as a shelf to one roomie who had loaded it with lots plastic bags stuffed with odds-and-ends.
WHO? - Well, remember one of the oblivious phone gals I mentioned? She had left it there assuming that CG would be in the room.
BUT THAT'S STUPID? - Tell me about it!

Slowly the huddle broke up, each one still amazed at how someone could have left a burning candle unattended that way. None of us had an answer for that!

After a while the power was back and we went to inspect the damage properly. That's when I noticed that the bed that was placed beside the cupboard was also burnt on one end. Apparently, stuff had fallen down on the bed and in all the running-about one of them had taken care of that too. To make matters worse, the plastic that had caught fire had actually melted and seeped into the cupboard through the cracks in the door and burnt most of the clothes too. A scrambled inspection of the contents of the cupboard and we soon had 2 piles of clothes: BURNT and ALIVE.

Phew!

For that night we made places for the inmates of the room within our own and in other empty places in the PG. The smoke filled house felt dark and damp. But we did not dwell on anything. Sitting around in a group in Mai's room we joked about the whole thing while still knowing how serious it was. Slowly, we broke up and went our ways.

It was one helluva evening to say the least!