The drone of the vehicles speeding at 65 miles per hour on the freeway barely a couple of hundred metres from my 3rd floor apartment in North Gessner, Houston, Texas is monotonously constant. The noise recedes quite significantly when the doors and windows are closed but with slight concentration the 24x7x365 sound is very audible especially in the quiet of night.

I start ruminating again on the burning topic which is the Hurricane Ike. Ike is to hit the Texas coast today. Our client, where we are assigned, has declared a holiday. In fact, the majority of the offices in Houston city are closed. Everyone has been advised to remain indoors, to board their glass windows (nail wooden planks) and to stock up food, water etc. to ride out the hurricane. In US, they call it “hunkering down”. The areas which are close to the coast including parts of low-lying Houston are being evacuated. Curfew has also been imposed in certain areas. A fellow BIJHARI, Ravi Ranjan who works in JP Morgan at Singapore and whom I met in the flight and who was in Houston for a week long business trip, has moved to a nearby city, Dallas, as advised by his Houston office. Somehow, similar plans of ours have not materialized and now it is too late to try flying out of Houston. My friends and I have visited the nearby shopping mall Kroger last evening and brought quite a few food and other items such as canned water, fruit juice, buns, cheese, fruits, biscuits, candles, a lighter etc. Haldiram packets, Kaju barfis and Moori (puffed rice) brought from Mustafa in Singapore are there too. The safety department of the local company has clearly warned us to be fully prepared for water and power outage which can last upto two weeks. Their administration has also helped us in all possible ways by providing the essentials such as additional cans of water, eatables and a torch apart from giving us a full briefing in advance which was of great great value.

I pass the day looking out into the balcony and simultaneously watching TV which is broadcasting a running commentary of the happenings from the potential hurricane zones. I also occasionally glance at the windows and the roof which do not promise to be capable of bearing the higher categories of the Saffir Simpson hurricane scale. Ike is supposed to be a category 3 hurricane (maximum wind speed 203 kms/hour and a maximum storm surge of 12 feet). However, my mind fears what if it becomes category 4, “will the house apparently constructed with relatively thinner walls and steel frames be good enough”. The words of the HSE director sound somewhat scary “At the time of the storm, hide into the safest place of the house, say, the bathroom, lie down in the bath tub with a few thick rugs over you”. I am at my wits end. Should I really take his words by the letter. Moreover, he has also asked us to fill the bath tub with water since the taps will go off in the hurricane and the tub water will be required for the barest of the bathroom ablutions. Gingerly, I start filling the tub, an act which was to prove to be a very intelligent one to do. In my mind, I have already decided to sleep in my bed with the windows tightly closed behind the venetian blinds. I survey the neighborhood and assure myself that with houses on both sides of my apartment block, the chances of the windows and roofs being blown off are quite remote.

By late afternoon, the tell-tale signs of the impending storm are palpable. The clouds are all over. The sunshine has started to fade. Some of my other colleagues living in the same residential community pay a visit and run through the do’s and don'ts. I tell them about my plans of not hiding in the bathroom and instead of riding it out sleeping in my bed. As expected, the Ike is about to arrive in the coast now. The daredevil correspondents of the local channels are out in the field giving a full picture from the coastal areas as well as from the city. I can easily observe the rapidly deteriorating weather and a drizzle has also started. The latest news is that the hurricane will hit the city at about midnight. It is about 9 pm now. For once, the freeway has become quiet. Other than an occasional car or a truck, there is no movement at all. Soon, there will be no vehicles there. The TV shows footage of some Galvestonians ( residents of the famous Galveston town which was the scene of the worst hurricane in the history of America which killed nearly 8000 people in 1900) who have refused to be evacuated. The correspondent asks a lady why has she taken such a risk of remaining in her house and she replies “you know we Galvestonians are like that. All my life, I have lived here and it is not at all easy for me to move out with my cattle and the pets.” By now, the coastal parts of Galveston are already getting flooded due to storm surge. The TV shows another lady and her pet dog being rescued from a marooned location..

Miraculously, my roaming mobile phone which has been failing me constantly, starts to work. By this time, the storm has really picked up. I am now busy reading news reports on my laptop. All this will soon be luxury because the power failure appears a certainty as I can feel the growing intensity of the storm outside. And inevitably so, the power goes off plunging everything around us in pitch dark. I am still not sure whether the hurricane has hit the city. The scene outside (observed from inside by slightly opening the balcony door which is so difficult against the powerful wind force) is chaotic and a tornado like situation has already built up. On my miracle mobile I make a couple of calls to my family in Bangalore. They are watching the live reports about Houston city and informing me about the hurricane. For the next 2-3 hours or so until the hurricane had completely passed over, my wife continues to give me the update. “The hurricane has hit Galveston, curfew has been imposed in Houston, the entire Houston city is pitch dark, some of the downtown Houston offices have had their windows completely smashed etc.”

The next 2-3 days that we spent confined in our apartments without electricity, telephone and water and on a diet of cold snacks and bread were indeed a humbling experience. There was no fire to cook. The cooking range I had runs on electricity. The TV and the laptop were gone and the mobile phone was also about to go dead with the fading battery. It was abundantly clear that no matter how much advancements we make in science and technology, a little twists and turns by nature are enough to deflate our pride. That exactly was the case when we were filling our bathtubs to prepare for the power and water outage or when we were contemplating hiding in the safest locations in our house to protect ourselves from a possible smashing of windows or damages to the roof itself. The 13 trillion dollars economy of America representing a 25% share of the world’s GDP seemed helpless. Every morning, in the next couple of days, we would hope for the restoration of power and water but the damages were widespread and it took the authorities quite a while to restore the services which was decided to be done in a prioritized manner. Luckily, the audio tapes of spiritual discourses and a battery operated audio cassette walkman, which I do not normally carry with me became the best companions. The walkman had a radio too which helped me to get the local news through its FM channel. On the 2nd day after the huricane, during the relaxed curfew hours, we ventured to set out in our car into downtown Houston and saw the devastations closely. The worst was the traffic lights which in Houston hang from the cables. Many of them had broken loose. While driving, we came across a number of houses which had been damaged by the trees falling over them. We desperately wanted to sit in a café and have some coffee or tea. But that was not possible. The water and power outage had completely paralyzed the city. In the melee, we could hardly identify the roads leading to Hillcroft Avenue, famous for numerous Indian shops, restaurants etc. In any case, no shops were open. Our hope of eating a proper meal was not to be realized. Next day, though, was slightly better. Shiva restaurant in Sugarland was permitted by the authorities to open and we rushed there to feast on a grand buffet lunch which tasted absolutely delightful. Eating pakoras, samosas, chawal-daal and sabji after a gap of 5 days was like hitting the jackpot.

Hurricane Ike was one of the most severe storms in the history of USA. For most of us, there was no precedent of this situation. Fortunately, the storm was close to a category 3 only when it hit the coast. It still brought down a number of trees, traffic lights, window panes and billboards etc. in Houston glimpses of which some of you might have seen in the news. That the loss of life in the coastal areas was minimal was thanks to advance warnings and preparations by the government and the respective agencies who did a commendable job.

As I write this article, everything is back to normal. Actually, within a week’s time, most part of the city was functional. The gas stations had opened and so had the malls.

Happy belated Durga Puja greetings, folks, till I write about a few more exciting facts about US seen through the eyes of a BIJHARI.