It was the year that came to be known as The Year of the Madras Flood. Things had started off innocently enough, like most disasters. An MGM-style drizzle, ideal for a Gene Kelly outing, changed genre midway to turn into the Noah section of the Old Testament. The rain came down like a million pipes had burst with no plumber in sight and Madras looked like a giant cup overflowing with weak coffee.

Having exhausted my repertoire torturing Kavi, and with nowhere to go, this got me wondering. What if there was a new Ark? And CG was in charge of filling it up. Dr Sarathi and our neighbour, Old Stubble Butt, would have been dead certs. As for the female contingent, there would’ve been no avoiding Lanka Jhansi and Auntie Renu. And before you knew it, it would be The Planet of the Apes all over again.

The good thing was, with the city resembling the permanently clogged sink in the Banka home, schools downed their shutters like they had gone out of business. Rumour was our headmaster Amalraj, known never to waste a minute, had been sighted rowing away in a home-made boat, Ms Charlotte DeCosta in tow.

The bad thing was Mother decided to leave.

If you continue sharing a bedroom with your parents beyond the potty phase, two things are certain. One – the chances of your growing into a normal, well-adjusted adult are pretty nearly nil. Two – you’d know if things were amiss with the folks. But, on the fifth day of relentless rain, when Mother stood at the doorway with a packed suitcase and said, “I’m leaving. Anyone wants to join me?” it came as a complete surprise – at least to me.

As a couple, my parents were hardly in the Savitri–Satyavan mould. I couldn’t see mother putting up more than a token resistance when the god of death came for father. If the muttered curses, the constant mockery of each other’s habits and flying utensils were anything to go by, they had more of a Taylor–Burton thing going (without the budget, of course).

But this was unheard of.

Women didn’t leave a Meghamala home.

Not unless they did it horizontally, wearing a garland (while the men went “Gosh darn, who’s going to make my coffee now?”).

But, then again, this wasn’t a Meghamala woman we were talking about.

It was Mother.

With Mother’s announcement, grandmother looked like she’d been asked to slaughter a goat, Lalli said “Why?”, father continued drawing and CG was nowhere to be seen. Kavi alone ran to mother and held her hand. I stayed put, wondering what to do.

Mother was an expressive woman. Happiness, anger, disappointment or mischief – you could see her emotions clear as a children’s illustration. What I saw on her face that day was calm. Something I’d never seen before. And that worried me. Maybe it was because the tiny, unexposed, adult core of my heart knew calm was often a mask for something else.

Something also told me that if there was a time to exercise the loyalty muscle, it was now. Mother and Kavi didn’t look as good a team as Mother, Kavi and me. They needed a man. Besides, there was every chance of the rains abating, Amalraj returning from his dirty weekend, and it would be school all over again.

An hour after leaving, though drenched and homeless, the three of us were still less than two hundred metres from our house. Soosai the rickshawallah, Mother’s charioteer for her weekly matinées, negotiated the flood waters the best he could but he was no Captain Nemo. The similar amount of arrack sloshing around inside of him didn’t exactly help either.

“Where are we going?” said Kavi.

“Somewhere. Anywhere,” said mother.

“But I didn’t tell Pattu Miss. She’ll scold me when I go back.”

Kavi knew how to spoil things. Here we were on an adventure of a lifetime and she had to bring in school.

Mother didn’t reply, so I did.

“No more school for us, Kavi, from now on, we’ll never ever go to school.”

Though I tried to sound sombre, mother caught the repressed glee in my voice. I felt ashamed for a second. Then again, I didn’t see the harm in my approach. After all, irons were struck while hot and hay was made while suns shone. Even when it was raining like tarnation. Kavi let out a wail.

“Make no mistake, Ramu. Wherever you are, whatever you do, both of you will go to school,” Mother said.

I wasn’t overly worried. I knew that it would be some time before we were found admission in another school. That was good enough for the time being.

Soosai, who had managed to progress five feet in the last ten minutes, came to.

“Engey, ma? Where do you want to go?” he said.

“Central Station,” said mother, prompting him to take a hefty swig from his “water” bottle.

The earlier instruction to Soosai had been, “Move!” which could’ve meant anything. Now it was obvious mother meant business. We were leaving.

From Pandari Bai to Nirupa Roy, mothers had been doing this for years. Heading out into a cruel world, children in tow, on account of a drunken, dysfunctional or defunct husband. Though father didn’t quite fit these categories, it was pretty clear what fate had in store for us.

First, mother would buy a sewing machine. When that didn’t cover rent, she’d reluctantly send me to break stones in a quarry while Kavi went to school. As Mother pedalled away tailoring a fat woman’s blouse, a moneylender would try to outrage her modesty. I would save her in the nick of time by stabbing him with her scissors. He would die. I’d go to jail. Meanwhile, an earthquake would separate mother and Kavi. I’d return fifteen years later, the most glamorous smuggler in all of south India, save everyone, forgive my penitent father, marry the police commissioner’s daughter and we’d pose for the group photograph. The End.

The part I liked best – I wouldn’t have to go to school.

Faithful charioteers had their limits, too. Ten minutes and five feet later, Soosai stopped the rickshaw. I could understand why. While the external water level had risen by half a foot, the level in his bottle had dropped to near-empty.

“Can’t, ma,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’?” said Mother.

We were in the middle of GN Chetty Road, waist-deep in water. Central Station could have been on another planet. A handful of people (who’d probably decided to abandon their families as well) were visible chest-upwards wading through the muck. The body of a dead cat floated by.

“Can’t means can’t,” said Soosai. He picked up the floating feline by its tail, examined it and, finding no immediate use for it, threw it back in the water.

“Come, get off,” said Mother.

She had decided to leave. It was going to take more than a drunken rickshawman and the worst natural disaster Madras had seen (if you didn’t count the Bankas, that is) to stop her.

Having got off, we realised we had a problem when Kavi tried to wail and went “Glub!” instead. All we could see of her above the water was the top of her head and a pair of round eyes. Mother handed me our lone box of belongings and picked Kavi up. Barring her eyes and forehead, she was an even shade of brown. She spat out a jet of what looked like dilute Bournvita and let out her wail.

Soosai took stock of the situation. One destitute woman with a mad glint in her eye, one sewage-coated little girl, one emaciated boy teetering with an overstuffed suitcase, one dead cat floating away in the direction of Dr Sarathi’s clinic, and his arrack-sodden heart gave.

“Why, ma?” he said. By now the country liquor had breached its barriers and was coming out of his eyes in little fountains. “Why are you leaving? Who’ll I take to Rajakumari on Sunday afternoons now?”

An hour later we were in Mount Road. The rain had stopped but the water showed no signs of subsiding. Yet Soosai persevered. His bottle was empty, his spindly legs were on autopilot and he was singing an unrecognisable version of an MGR hit that spoke of living like a free bird. Mother couldn’t take it any more.

“Stop, for god’s sake,” she said.

Excerpted with permission from the novel Ice Boys in Bell-Bottoms by Krishna Shastri Devulapalli, HarperCollins India.

Krishna Shastri Devulapalli's latest book How to be a Literary Sensation: A Quick Guide to Exploiting Friends, Family & Facebook for Financial Gain can be found underwater in all the best localities of Chennai.