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Rain, rain go away

August 1st, 2005  |  Published in India & Around, Living  |  15 Comments

A few years ago, I remem­ber being stranded in office dur­ing the height of the Mum­bai monsoons.

Read­ing this account, I was trans­ported to that day. There were about 12 of us. We had a small office at Fort. This was before we shifted to our larger office in Mahim.

We started play­ing dumb cha­rades at about 7 in the evening to keep our­selves enter­tained. When we heard that the trains had stopped, most of us gave up any attempt to try and get out of office. Some braved the odds and took taxis from Fort to their far off homes. Though it turned out to be a really expen­sive propo­si­tion, since most of them had to shell out heaps of money. In fact, find­ing cabs under the cir­cum­stances were also next to impos­si­ble. The best thing, as we dis­cov­ered, is to stay put wher­ever you are. And that’s exactly what we did.

It turned out to be a mem­o­rable night. Ordered fish curry rice from a restau­rant nearby. All of us sat around the food and fin­ished it in no time. Resumed play­ing DC and this went on till the wee hours of the morn­ing. One by one, folks went off to find com­fort­able places : on top of the desks, join­ing chairs : doing the best they could. Unfor­tu­nately, the place was cramped and not suit­able for overnight stay, so some of decided not to go to sleep at all. Play­ing DC till early morn­ing can be a tir­ing expe­ri­ence. One also runs out of movie names. I think, by morn­ing, we were even begin­ning to make up sev­eral of the names.

I remem­ber this being a fun expe­ri­ence, because the next day we were back in the rel­a­tive com­fort of our homes. The rains sub­sided and things were back to nor­mal. Not so this time around. It’s much more seri­ous. Peo­ple spend­ing more than 2 days in the office. Stranded for hours on end in sta­tions, bus stops, roads. Not being able to get through to their loved ones. Car­casses of ani­mals. Debris every­where. Cars aban­doned. Phones not work­ing. Offices shut.

Talk­ing to friends in the city and read­ing some accounts, I can only imag­ine how bad things are. The other day, dad said over the phone that he is glad that I am now in Ban­ga­lore because they would have been so wor­ried. They have already had their share of wor­ries about sis when the UK bomb blasts happened.

I do hope that the bat­ter­ing stops soon. I think the city can only take so much. I know every­one is talk­ing about all the brave sto­ries that have emerged out of the dis­as­ter, but I think this is one more dis­as­ter that Mum­bai can do with­out. Per­son­ally, I am glad I left when I did but I have to admire the resilience of the city.

On the other hand, Ban­ga­lore has hardly received any rains. While it threat­ens to rain all the time : over­cast skies and heavy winds. There’s a small shower and that’s all. Pos­si­bly, this is all we’ll get this time around.

In a way, it’s prob­a­bly for the bet­ter since we all know what hap­pens to Ban­ga­lore when it rains! In fact, if Ban­ga­lore was bat­tered the Mum­bai has been, this city would prob­a­bly not sur­vive at all! I shud­der to think what would hap­pen. Some­one com­mented that these kind of rains would never hap­pen in Ban­ga­lore. But then was any­one in Mum­bai expect­ing the kind of rains it received? Not even the Met depart­ment apparently…

Responses

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  1. AmitKen says:

    August 1st, 2005 at 10:22 pm (#)

    Hi!

    Hats off to the ‘Mum­bai Spirit’. its still strug­gling bravely against all odds on its own… the administration/govt is miss­ing from the scene as usual.

  2. Sam says:

    August 2nd, 2005 at 8:59 am (#)

    I even remem­bered the rain when I was in Mum­bai, trains were not run­ning and I had to walk all the way from And­heri to Mahim. But this time the rain seems to have no mercy.

  3. Z000n says:

    August 2nd, 2005 at 9:50 am (#)

    Does our MET Dept func­tion actu­ally?
    I won­der what these guys do under the name of research. First they were not able to pre­dict Tsunami. Then now the mon­soon.
    Grrrrr.…
    Its foool­ish­ness to depend on MET.

    And yes, it was adven­ture for most of my friends too. Mon­soon in mum­bai is get­ting worse everyday.

    Anyway…greeetz!!
    Came via Orkut.

  4. Twilight Fairy says:

    August 2nd, 2005 at 7:46 pm (#)

    Same here, some­thing like this dis­rupted our office work at Delhi (blogged abt it then too)..but then of course, we all just enjoyed, mat­ters wer­ent serious..

    Ever tried play­ing DumbC with var­i­ous variations..for eg. words, sen­tences, phrases, idioms.. its a whole new crazy expe­ri­ence :). For some rea­son, when­ever friends get together and they have to pass time, things always come down to Truth or dare (or kiss — another ver­sion :p )

  5. nandish says:

    August 2nd, 2005 at 10:27 pm (#)

    Met dept sucks. so does dis­as­ter man­age­ment is mum­bai. Its pathetic, believe me expe­ri­enced it dur­ing the last week. The city’s atti­tude and spirit rules.

  6. Sandhya says:

    August 3rd, 2005 at 1:13 am (#)

    It really was pretty sad though that a rumor could kill peo­ple in hun­dreds (talk­ing abt the rumor that some­one thought it was a tsunami!). Every year some kind of calamity seems to be striking…is it the chang­ing global weather pattern?

  7. nandish says:

    August 3rd, 2005 at 9:54 am (#)

    Dis­as­ter man­age­ment in mum­bai sucks. I expe­ri­enced it this week. Mum­bai spirit rules!!

  8. Twilight Fairy says:

    August 3rd, 2005 at 1:30 pm (#)

    hey, yes­ter­day I had posted another com­ment here ..and it never appeared.. :|

  9. Pallavi says:

    August 4th, 2005 at 10:14 am (#)

    We are glad that you are in Ban­ga­lore too… Called Miku and Pra­bal.. you must know that Pra­bal had to swim back home… poor guys..

    And take care..

    We are going home honey.. if you need any­thing from there call us ..

  10. Karthik says:

    August 5th, 2005 at 12:17 am (#)

    well my office is just off cun­nigham road , 10 days back there was an hour of rain and it was a royal mess and it took me 3hrs to get to indrana­gar a 20 min drive at best .. shud­der to think wat wud hap­pen if it pours here like it did in mumbai

    Nice pics by the way …

    cheers
    karthik

    Came thru amits page if u wondering

  11. @mit says:

    August 6th, 2005 at 3:18 am (#)

    I have heard that Ban­ga­lore had many other issues as well of the infra … did you not?

    did you read the Ind Exp inter­view of Dharam Singh? He was adamant that there are no infra issues at all. What is your take?

    BTW –Do you care to fol­low the Rab­bit Hole ?

  12. @mit says:

    August 6th, 2005 at 3:19 am (#)

    Do you care to fol­low the Rab­bit Hole ?

  13. arjun sudhakaran says:

    August 7th, 2005 at 2:38 pm (#)

    hello!
    wanna hear my story.…my insti­tute being in dadar,i had to walk down for over 9 hours to my acco­mo­da­tion in malad…wading through chest level water!
    and to make mat­ters worst i saw a sub­merger audi road­ster aban­doned on the road­side!
    repent sinners.….armageddon is coming!

  14. sp says:

    August 8th, 2005 at 9:49 am (#)

    Heh, rains were not really that bad com­pared to what i’ve seen in my home­town, what was awful was the dri­an­age. Com­ing from Orissa, I’ve always known this was some­thing that was sup­posed to hap­pen — and hap­pen it did. Atleast, things are limp­ing back to nor­mal — and no, they are not nor­mal yet in Mum­bai and sub­urbs, as the local admin­stra­tion would have you believe.

    MET depart­ment and pre­dic­tons — heh. Well, the DoE has always tried to drum up the fact that they built a huge PARAM com­puter that rivalled the best in the world. We dont really need a “best in the world” for weather sim­u­la­tions, but crunch­ing data on a grid that is some­what like PARAM would be great.

    And nice to see your blog pow­ered by WordPress :)

  15. tintin says:

    August 12th, 2005 at 11:21 pm (#)

    Quit Ben­ga­loru. Go back to Kamatepura.

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This web­site is main­tained by Anita Bora. If you want to know more, there’s a detailed page here. You’re wel­come to leave a com­ment. For any other queries, you can get in touch with me on anitabora5 at red­iff­mail dot com. I started blog­ging way back in 2001 and this blog doc­u­ments my trav­els and tra­vails through the years.

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