It’s amazing how activity in a major city like Mumbai can be so suddenly disrupted, its people cut off from each other, within a matter of a couple of hours. The streets get flooded. Knee-deep water. The rains coming down so hard that the buildings on the other side of the road get hazy, uncertain shapes. I just can't help but imagine them.
Turn on the TV for news, and you get static. It is a wonder that life isn’t wonderful for long, so the power goes as well. People get stuck in darkness, trapped high-rise apartments, high enough to stop flood-water coming in, low enough to avoid the inevitable leaks from the roof of the building.
Mobile phone batteries run out, and the signals it receive get intermittent. Stuck planes at the airport, waiting to take off as the runway gets more and more flooded. Food packets being air-dropped. Rains lasting for more than 48 hours. Electricity supply gets switched off because of the flooding, and would not resume till the water levels got back to normal.
But still, Mumbaikars never give up. After the rains have stopped young men and children come out to frolic in the water, which was muddy and filthy. Bits of garbage float on it, and a few plastic bags. The air fills with the crying of street dogs,who ran from one corner of the street to another, trying to get to higher ground. The hour in the evening when the rain gets held up fills by the noises of excited children. Some sit on the road divider, dangling bare legs into murky water, still at the age when they enjoy the water and do not think of the dirt and disease it carries. Then the rains came down again.
The night seems unreal because it gets dark outside. Even at night they are used to little bits of light here and there: streetlights in the distance; glimmers from windows of buildings; at least stars. The only light they see, besides the candles inside and the sporadic lightning outside, is from the occasional car gliding through the water, one-third of it submerged, its headlights warning of its arrival in front of windows from a distance. The dark, still water being disturbed by first ripples and then waves of light and dark, and then the car itself, resolving no doubt to never make fun of boats again. Cars breaking down in the middle of the road, and the drivers abandoning it, leaving its indicator lights flickering all night, so people would know it was there.
Every year in Mumbai there are at least one or two days when life comes to a halt and streets are flooded. If you happen to be in office when it happens, you are invariably stuck there overnight. If are unlucky enough to be commuting, you could spend hours in whatever mode of transport you choose, though often walking makes more sense. Walking 30-40 kilometres in knee-deep water isn’t unusual. Sometimes, through chest-deep water.
Many of them slip into a manhole. Wading through thigh-deep water, people suddenly feel no ground beneath their feet, and find themselves slipping. But people behind often help others from falling. That’s one thing about Mumbai: people help each other, because they know that we’re all in it together. You look out for the guys around you, and they look out for you. It’s self-interest.
The rains stop by mid-morning, though the lights often take till evening to come. The streets no longer flooded by noon. Electricity comes back to the city in phases, and that welcome clicky sound, and the whirr of the fan starting up, coming in the evening, after more than 24 hours without power. The pictures get pretty scary: streets like rivers; thousands of cars abandoned in the highway; and everyhere, brown muddy water. The city becomes its drainage system; soon, that would go underground again, and life would be normal.
Until next year.
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