Its early morning and I rush from window to window trying to look outside.

My mother is still asleep. There are only the two of us in the large two bedroom, ground floor flat in Mumbai.

Strangely all the windows are tightly shut including the balcony doors. I can see through the glass on the windows that we are underwater. The inside of the house is bone dry.

I wonder what’s this all about. Suddenly a thought strikes me that we should move out of the house before water seeps in and drowns us.

So I wake my mother and quickly explain the situation to her. I pull her towards the main door and ask her to take a deep breath - which both of us do. Then I open the main door and suddenly water gushes in. But I resist the strong flow of water and am already swimming up the stairs towards the top of the building.

We both swim fast, with me leading and pulling my mother along. We soon reach the terrace and surface at the top of the water.

I breath in much needed air with great effort and my mother is so tired that she’s losing her breath. But I force her head above the water.

Now I look around and see that the half of the water tank on top of the building is submerged. I can see five people on the top of the tank and one of them waving to me.

I swim towards the ladder and help my mother up and then follow her. The man on the top of the tank helps us up.

Then I realize that I am surrounded by five people, two of whom are Gopal and his wife. The others are two unknown to me children and a young man.

Now Gopal is the most talkative and abusive character in our building who does not know when to stop talking.

Gopal starts blabbering in his Iyer type Tamil, a eunuch language, which is actually Malayalam spoken in a Tamil accent. (my opinion – Iyers please pardon me).

He informs me breathlessly at the top of his voice that Pakistan test fired a nuclear missile into the Arabian Sea that was to land far away, but instead exploded in the sea a few hundred kilometers off the west coast of India.

That resulted in a huge earthquake and the waters shifted into the shores of India.

I look around and feel the deathly silence all around except for Gopal shouting at the top of his voice. I see only brownish water all around. The water looks calm and has absolutely no waves. I the look at the surrounding buildings and see a few people on their tops. Every building is submerged under water like ours.

Nothing has survived.

I despondently and resignedly sit down with a deep sigh and join the few living dead waiting for death to engulf us – which I know is only going to be very soon.

I wake up breathless and feeling depressed. I look around and find that I am still lying on my bed. I deeply wonder whether that was just a nightmare to be dismissed lightly or a premonition of things to come.

Logical thinking takes over and a few questions appear in my mind

1. Why was there no water in my flat while the others were submerged?
2. Why did I swim up the stairs instead of going out on to the foyer and then taking the quicker way - straight up?

And so on…..

Why do I call it a premonition? That’s because the building in my nightmare is the current one where we live. The surrounding buildings also are the same as they are now. The entire scenario is the same as it is now except for the water.

Whoosh!!!! I hope this premonition does not come true…. like many others that did.

Ps. I request you to send me an appropriate image since I could not find one.