Mumbai - Wet and Weeping

Rain. Heavy rain. Very heavy rain.

26 July 2005. It was meant to be just another rainy day. It was work and the usual banter all the way till five in the evening when suddenly all the buses were re scheduled an hour prior schedule. We soon realized that it had been raining heavier than normal and parts of the city were reportedly flooded. The realization was late due to the fact that working in a remote part of the city does not give you access to the latest gossip and happenings.

I managed to get dropped home in a Toyota Qualis. The area is Vashi, Navi Mumbai and is about 25 kms away from the office, which is quite close to the port. There was chaos mostly because of panic stricken people trying to get back home. After an hour of inching through miles of traffic did we reach Vashi. I was being duly door delivered to my house when the driver stopped about 300 meters short. I was about to put one foot down gingerly on the road only to realize that there was knee-deep water. And momentarily I did mentally berate the driver for not maneuvering the vehicle through that water all the way to my apartment but soon realized that it was the best thing he did as the vehicle could have got badly stuck and he had other people to drop as well. So I braved through knee-deep water and was quite a sight to see with a bag in one hand, a disobedient umbrella in the other. When I reached the apartment there was a pleasant sight awaiting me. There were little children simple reveling in the rain. They were having the time of their lives. There was rain cricket being played. It was such a heartening sight.

Soon I entered a dark house. There was no power. It had been raining continuously for eight hours now. And it was raining hard. The cell phone networks were behaving very erratically. And we soon heard stories of low-lying parts of Mumbai being flooded. The evening was spent in darkness and suspicion. Close friends and family from all over were
desperately trying to get in touch with us to know whether we were safe, but all in vain. The networks were completely jammed. The day was becoming night and it was still pouring with the same passion and fervour. Soon landlines stopped working as well. I had somehow managed to inform my folks back home that I was now dry and safe.

We slept that night and could not ever dream the kind of annihilation rains could bring. Next morning we had woken up to 18 hours of no electricity, no mobile phones, no landlines and no drinking water and of course incessant rains. It was not a pleasant thing to wake up to. And as usual I thought since I was living near to the office, should leave for work. It is a ten-minute walk to the highway from where the office bus picks me up. As I stepped out of my building I was clutching intently to what was left of my now run down but originally very smart three-fold umbrella. It was of absolutely no use. I had to wade through nearly half a kilometer of knee-deep water. And here I saw some amazing sights. In some places there were tens of motorbikes simply sub merged in the water. There were scores of people swarming local phone booths trying to make a desperate phone call somewhere. I finally reached my bus stop and waited patiently hoping the bus would come. After a 45-minute wait and frantically trying to contact office braving through a long line of people at the STD booth I decided to return home. At home I was completely drenched. It seemed that I would have been better off without the umbrella.

That day was the most uneventful yet memorable day of the year. It was like living in Stone Age. There were absolutely no trappings. As the day progressed it was nearly 24 hours of intermittent rainfall. It rained like there was no tomorrow. I had never seen something like that in my life. It was like all hell was let loose. There was no contact with the outside world. I felt extremely claustrophobic. It was a stay –at- home day for all of us. We spent the day in darkness having nothing at hand to do.

Soon we entered the third day of rains. It was 28 July and there seemed to be no signs of the rains stopping. But life had to go on. There were signs of coping. Newspapers were there. The network was creeping in and there were some hours of electricity. Navi Mumbai residents were the only people in office that day. Though majority of the offices remained blithely closed, a shipping company cannot shut shop even for a day. So we dutifully went into an office of skeletal staff. The vessel operations though delayed, did courageously continue and the vessel chugged out of Indian waters that day. In contrast all systems at the office were down. There was absolutely nothing we could do. We had had enough of discussing rainy stories that day and were now twiddling our thumbs.

Then fortunately for us there was a silver lining among the clouds and systems came sloppily back to normal. We soon finished our work and were heading home. It was still raining very hard.

The next day we were back to work and things seemed to be in control now. It was the fourth day after the wettest day Mumbai had ever had in decades. Stories were now pouring in. NDTV constantly showed images of the city grappling in the rain. The city had recorded 944 mms of rain in 2 days! That was three quarters of what the city would get in an entire year. Low lying areas had water that had filled nearly 20 feet. Almost a thousand people were declared dead, but we all know in reality the numbers could have been much higher. People had died of drowning, wall collapses, stampedes, electrocution and also being trapped in vehicles.

We also got first hand reports from colleagues and friends of their experiences. Some people had to walk for miles in darkness and water to get to their homes. People living in suburbs took 36 hours to get home! Some people were trapped in their cars for this time. There was a sea of humanity at the railway stations. All the while without food or water or lavatories. We even heard a horror story of someone actually walking past a dead body without knowing it was one. One cannot even picture the plight of hapless little children, pregnant women and the elderly.

The mighty rains had made everybody so vulnerable. Nobody could withstand the fury of nature. It was such a humbling experience. Life had simply come to a stand still. It brought out our raw survival instincts. People who had comfortable homes simply took refuge in them, the others tried brutally to create some shelter somewhere. All said and done people were helping each other a lot. It was so heartening to see the city huddled together due to the calamity. Everyone was working hard to the best of her capacity.

News channels, Radio stations and newspapers were the only ones making the most of the situation. The situation was dissected and everybody was discussing it no end. There were allegations to and fro about the city’s deplorable infrastructure, the miserable drainage systems and waste disposal system. Every single person was airing strong views on what caused the deluge and how it could have been managed. There was absolutely no inkling from the Met department about the torrential rains. Hence there was no possibility of evacuation. The drains were blocked with no place for the water to flow into the sea. And in the name of development green cover has been systematically done away with. Hence massive soil erosion and landslides were there in many areas.

Mumbai is still damp and sore even today due to the rains. Epidemics are rampant and thousands of crores of property is lost. The blame list is endless. We can blame everyone from the local corporator to the Chief Minister. The blame list is endless. However at the end of the day all of have to bear the brunt of it. We are all victim to a deep-rooted problem that is a despicable concoction of illiteracy, poverty, over population, corruption and poor administration. The havoc that the rain caused is a fall out of that. We simply refuse to think two steps ahead of us. As citizens we refuse to be pro active and love to pass the buck to some politician or the government. Why cant we ourselves take some baby steps to progress? Why don’t we protest against atrocity? Why don’t we cast our vote? Why can’t we be responsible citizens? Why can’t we stop being cynical and become pro active? Why do we shy away from duty?

In the name of development we eliminate what is good for us. It reminds me of the erstwhile oafish Kalidasa cutting off the branch of the tree that he was sitting on. When will wisdom ever don on us?