I have been a thoroughbred Delhite having lived there for 21 years of the 24 years that I have walked this planet. So most of my opinions about Mumbai are from whatever falls on my gullible ears from conversations with people belonging from there or from my faint recollections of a 3 day stopover in Bombay during the 3rd year of my undergraduate studies. This has given rise to countless and now done to death debates of the Delhi v/s Mumbai thing and therefore I shall not venture there preferring to retain the readership of the 2-3 people from Mumbai who drop in here once in a while. Going into a rainbow tinged flashback to probably the best days of my college life I pause to recall the 3 days I spent over in Mumbai all immediately my memories are soaked in the 3 continuous days of torrential downpour I encountered over there. It just rained incessantly while I went all around Mumbai in shoes that went 'splish splosh' as i walked around weaving through endless lanes of traffic. I was told that this happened to be an annual feature during the monsoons when it poured for days altogether and paralyzed life all around the commercial capital of the country. However yesterday's turn of events seemed to have zapped even those who claimed to have seen it all as 94.4 cm or more than 3 feet of rain poured all over the city. It is easily the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in day anywhere in India beating the previous record of Cherrapunji which incidentally happened to be its only claim to fame. As this sequence of events unfolded over the 26th of July everyone seemed to have been taken aback because no warning was issued by the Met department the day before. Also Mumbai's drainage system which has been pitiable and exposed in the briefest of downpours was left facing a major crisis with thousands of people stranded all over the city and about 35 dead as per the official estimates. The commercial hub of the capital was shut down for 2 whole days and this irks me because even though the drainage has been a problem in the city for many years, precious little is being done to improve it. However in this dark hour I was still happy to see the ethos of India shine through as the common man abandoned their personal concerns and stepped out on the streets to help one another displaying a spirit and grit that is quintessentially Indian.
Images courtesy rediff.com and Hindustantimes.com
13 comments:
Actually compared to places like Madras and other cities in South, the drainage system in Mumbai is pretty good.
But there r a lot of low-lying areas in Mumbai which get flooded easily. Besides the way people throw trash along the railway tracks, blocks most of the drainage system.
It is really shocking to see Mumbai recieve 37.7 inches rainfall in a day...thats more than the annuan rainfall in South India...and Southern California too :)
Problems with numbers..when you have to deal with such huge numbers,i guess you have to throw all your ideas out of the window. It is a huge task and i don't know if you can treat the problem bit by bit.
every year there wud b floods or drought in Orissa
but then the status of it remains the same year after year
which brings to my memory the statement made by a recent client of mine from US
"our politicians are not corrupt they are inhuman"
Agree with Point5. Compared to Chennai the drainage system is much, much better. Of course, since it never rains in Chennai except once in that odd blue moon, think it doesn't make much of a difference.
The floods were tragic. Shocking, indeed. India is a plethora of paradoxes, actually. Flood at one place. Drought at another.
-Arjun
First visit here. I agree with couch potato in the flood-drought paradox. Every summer/ monsoon in West Bengal there is this hue and cry about the farmlands dying either because of too much rain and flooding or the lack of rains and drought. I wish the Govt would do something to better the situation because the ones living in the city are not the ones who suffer the most. They may be stranded and housebound for a couple of days but they atleast have the comfort of a roof over their head that does not leak. The ones suffering are the farmers who lose their crop as well as their shacks and their life blood.
@Pointy if mumbai's drainage is 'pretty good' I shudder to imagine wat happens in chennai during the monsoons.
@Totti i simply cant beleive they cant think their way out of having a repeat every year. Delhi had a similar traffic and pollution problem some years back but now they have all cars following pollution norms, all industries have been shifted outta the city, all buses are CNG equipped and the metro has sprung up beautifully within a period of 4 years.
@Swathi That was beautifully put by that client of urs. I guess Mr. Vajpayee came up with the brilliant suggestion of linking all the rivers a few years back to prevent the dual drought/flood situation but it seems to have shot down by the subsequent government.
@Couchpotato Shudder shudder to imagine wat the state of affairs must have been during the tsunami thingie in Chennai.
@m as i stated above, linking the big rivers in India might just be the perfect solution to avoid such a scenario.
The estimate for the sooper dooper ambitious interlinking of rivers project was in excess of Rs.80,000 crores. I guess it shot itself down. Besides, no one really knows the effect such large scale relocation of water will have on the environment and local eco systems. Its a great idea on paper though.
theres change in the global climate...basically due to human activiites...pollution
wat should be done every one knows...but no one does..
me first time here...nice blog u have...nice read
@me Thank u I shall keep dropping by ur blog to catch up on ur life's little tales :)
@anarkist its a brilliant idea nonetheless and sounds like a first even on the world level
@sophia thnk u keep visiting
this comment is a lil hutt kay.. ive heard so much about mumbai- esp this summer- my sisters went with a few friends to mumbai for 10 days and they fell in love with the place. they left the DAY the monsoons started... coincidence :)
still, that city sounds fantastic.
we were actually very inspired to mould karachi into something like it.
im dying to visit it myself ...probbaly next winter inshallah.
@kay I am sure Karachi has its own soul and ethos so I dunno abt the idea of moulding it into a Mumbai is such a good idea :)
I wud still recommend Delhi based on personal experience and the fact that its closer ;)
areh ofcourse... karachi is great- i didnt mean literally moulding it into mumbai- i just meant mumbai has developed far more than karachi has.. and it should move along the same way...the kind of progress that has taken plce in mumbai is only evident to people who comes from a place where in comparison far less has.
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