Caught in the Worst Cloudburst in a Century!

A year ago, on July 26, 2005, the Mumbai city received the highest one-day rains (over 900 mm) in a century.  When, even rains over 200 mm disrupt the city's transport system, that day it was complete chaos.

The problem was further aggravated by the choking of the antiquated drainage system by huge piles of plastic waste.  The uncontrolled, unplanned growth of the suburbs and destruction of mangrove ecosystems, which serve as a buffer between the land and the sea, have also been cited as the reasons for the flash flooding.

I operate from home, so usually I don't have to travel much.  But on that fateful Tuesday (July 26, 2005) I went to the state's secretariat at the south end of the city to get some certificates attested from the HR Department and got caught in the unprecedented cloudburst over the city.

Having finished my business by evening, I waited until dusk among the thronging crowd at the south terminal of the suburban railway.  When all means of transportation seemed impossible, I joined the hundreds of thousands of other stranded commuters to walk my way home along the 30 km railway track to my nearest destination.

Hardly had I reached the next station, I began to realize the difficulty of walking on the gravel or balancing on the steel rails.  Farther way down the water was waist-deep.  I saw people falling like cards stumbling over the crisscrossing tracks.  The volunteers from neighborhood localities stood guard the whole night with umbrellas and torches in hand in the unceasingly pouring rain.  They guided the haggard flow of a trail of humanity, reminiscent of the herds of cattle in the African wild, of the deep trenches and manholes along the tracks.  After five hours of walk and half way through, at Dadar station, the flooding was so heavy that the volunteers diverted the human traffic to the roads on the higher ground.  There, from the Dadar flyover I watched appalled the torrent of flood water gyrating and raging past the submerged buses and double-deckers, where it was a busy highway the day before.

I was dead tired when I rested on the railing of a bus stop.  I clung myself on the footboard of a passing bus till the next bus depot, from where special buses to long destinations were arranged. After standing for 3 hrs in a sardine-packed special bus I blacked out and collapsed.

When I woke up it was daylight and I found myself placed near a window seat with cool breeze and the sprinkle of blessed rain brushing against my face.  The bus had not moved even a kilometer in nine hours in that traffic snarl.

 Most of the passengers had got down and had started walking. The bus was rather empty.  I felt feverish. Somebody had knocked off my umbrella.  The documents package was clutched in my hand.  I regained my strength and determination and started walking again in the rain.  While there was no sign of administrative machinery or traffic police, the people sprang out spontaneously giving directions and offering food and water to the passers-by.

After reaching home 36 hours later, on Wednesday night, I had a warm bath, food and then hit the bed and slept like a log. All communication lines were disrupted.

During the following week I perused stoically the news reportage of over 400 casualties due to drowning, landslides, stampedes and electrocutions during the day of the cloudburst. There were over a thousand floating carcasses of cattle tethered in the numerous dairy farms within the city.  An outbreak of leptospirosis epidemic, affecting those exposed to the storm water, claimed many more lives.