September rain - Revisited

Two years earlier I wrote about September rains. That was in Bangalore. And now I am writing about yet another rainy day experience in the same month. This time in Mumbai. But no, this was not 'yet another' experience. This was the experience of a lifetime and it can happen only in Mumbai.

September 03, 2012

It started raining in the morning at around 10.30-11.00am. Started off as light showers, followed by intermittent heavy showers that at some point just became incessant. I was quite happy for we badly needed to bring down the more than 40% deficit in monsoons this year in Mumbai. Little did I anticipate what was about to follow.

6.50 pm:

I get a call from my roommate.

Did you hear? The traffic towards Kurla has come to a standstill. There is heavy water logging and vehicles are just stuck. How do you plan to go home?

Really? Oh no. Let me think over it.

I instantly recalled the day a couple of months ago when the monsoon season had just set in. Overnight, it had rained in quite heavily and I was in for a rude shock when I took out my car in the morning to go to office. I had to drive through one-two feet deep water for almost 2 kilometers and it took me one full hour to reach office, while it normally takes me just 20 minutes. I was really lucky that my car could put up with such a traumatic experience. Especially when all along my way I saw so many other broken down vehicles stranded on the road. (Honda Brio is awesome!)

The rain today was worse than that day and I really did not want to take a chance with the car this time. So I decided instead to wade through the water logged roads for the entire stretch of 5km in the worst case scenario.

7.05 pm: I get out of office to the parking lot. To my horror, the path to the parking was already a foot deep in water. It was worse inside. Floating cars all around, submerged till the headlights. I certainly didn't want to leave my car back in that condition, but neither was I keen on driving through the waters. Before I could take stock of what was happening, the parking lot attendant asked for my keys and offered to park it safely at a higher elevation to which I thankfully obliged. Apparently an hour after I left that place, these parking attendants were charging 200 bucks per head from everyone to bring their cars out of the water and the hapless people had no choice but to give in! (There is more to this part of the story, but that is for a different blogpost).

By now I was already soaked till the knees in water. My main priority at this time was to reach home as quickly as possible and avoid walking in the water as much as possible. Luckily for me, I managed to get a bus for the first 2km of the journey that took me to the end of Bandra-Kurla Complex. This is the place where the water-free and traffic-free road ends.

Another 3km to go. From hereon, the road was full of vehicles with barely any space in-between for pedestrians to walk through. The traffic had come to a stand-still.

Slowly and steadily, I walked to LBS Marg - the biggest curse of Mumbai monsoons. Thereon started a crazy journey walking through water that started off one foot deep to begin with and at its deepest point touched the knees. The road was completely congested with vehicles, some of them broken down completely (especially two wheelers and autos).
 

Most of the vehicles had their engines shut off and the drivers were out having chai coffee and waiting for the rains to stop and the traffic to clear! They knew that there was no point waiting inside the vehicles as there was absolutely no way the traffic was to move until the rain stops and the BMC pumps out all the water from the road.

The traffic was only on one side of the road cos the water-logging on the other side was so bad that it was impossible for vehicles, even trucks and SUVs to ply through that.
 

The entire 3km stretch till my house was flooded, with just the depth of water varying between 1 and 3 feet.

 
As I walked along, I decided to make the best of the situation and started clicking photographs of whatever I saw, so that I could post them up on a blog post that I would write later :) 

Here you can see people wading through the water:

Unfortunately the quality of pictures is quite bad as it was taken with the camera on a really ancient Blackberry. I had left my Nokia Lumia 800 smartphone at home, which as it turns out was a bad decision on a day like this.

LBS Marg was like Venice now. We badly needed Gondolas to travel around, not fossil fuel powered automobiles.
 

Here is a pic of a partly submerged broken-down bike:

This side of the street was now entirely being used by people to walk, despite deeper waters. The rains showed no signs of slowing down and the water level only kept increasing with each step.

I did have an umbrella with me but it was pretty useless. I was anyway half drenched from the dirty muddy ground water. Besides in a situation where one has to squeeze through vehicles in the jam packed road, it was not even possible to keep the umbrella open. I really didn't mind getting drenched though. The more important issue here was to ensure I don't fall into a pit or a pothole.

At crucial points there were several BMC workers who were guiding the pedestrians along the way, ensuring they don't walk into a pit. Commendable efforts.

I almost did fall off at one point though. Not into a pit, but I was walking on the footpath. Of course, I didn't initially know that I was walking on the footpath because it was atleast 1-2 feet below water level. I almost slipped and fell off when I put one foot forward onto the road instead, minor misstep anyway.

The worst part of the journey was my footwear. Bad day to be wearing the most uncomfortable hard-sole medium-heeled shoes.

It took me 1.5 hrs in all to reach home, half an hour of bus journey and one hour of walk in the water. Had I taken the car, I would easily taken 4-5 hours.

One important lesson I learnt from the whole episode.
Always carry your smartphone with a camera that has flash during monsoons in Mumbai. An umbrella may not always be required, but a good cameraphone is a must.

Postscript:
#mumbairains was the top trending keyword on twitter for that evening. Continuous updates on traffic situation across the city and emergency helpline contact numbers were tweeted.

There was even a google spreadsheet floating around with contact details of people offering carpooling to various destinations! I was absolutely amazed by the spirit of Mumbai in a situation like this.