A Playground Called Mumbai

Tuesday 26^th July started as a day as any other monsoon day inMumbai,dull, grey, with the hint of heavy showers as always present in the air. I wasamong the millions who went to work, never quite anticipating the disasterunleashed by the rains later in the afternoon. From my office in mid-town I wentdowntown and there in offices first heard anxious talk among the staff aboutdisruption in train services. By that time, three in the afternoon, it had beenraining heavily for an hour or so, but surely, I thought, an hour of rain wasnot enough to stop trains - normally a few hours of sustained rainfall, thuswent conventional wisdom, thrown in with high tides and choked drains was whatbrought the city to a standstill, and this was inevitable a few times everyyear.

I started back home at 4.30 p.m., amidst a heavy downpour, thinking, well,this was one of those lousy days when I would take twice the usual time to getback home to Powai, maybe 2-3 hours. At least I had my driver to do all the hardstop-go driving through rain and traffic. Very soon though I realized I wasbeing very optimistic. Ten minutes into the drive, in front of Churchgatestation, commuters had started spilling out of the station, desperately flaggingdown cabs. So the train service was out. It took us another half an hour to getto Fountain, a couple of hundred metres away. Another hour to get to thevenerable old lady of Boribunder, the Times of India office, and VT station.half a kilometer from Fountain. The already tight distance between vehicles onMumbai roads, usually measured in inches, was now filled by commuters squeezingthrough and taking to the roads, trudging to the next station in the hope offinding a train that was running.

We inched on (that is, literally) to the JJ Road flyover. Masses of peoplestreamed by, none asked for a lift, they knew they were better off walking. Carsgoing north to the suburbs then streamed on to the opposite-traffic lanes. Thisworried me, surely, this would only lead to massive traffic pile-ups if notcontrolled right away. We had seen a few traffic cops earlier on, but none now.We spent a couple of hours on the 3 km long flyover. I tried calling home butthe cellphone network seemed to have gone down too. I got down from the car andwent down the road to get some food. Most of the roadside stalls seemed to haveclosed down. I just grabbed some water and biscuits, we munched silently as itslowly sank in that this was going to be one long night. I finally managed toget in touch with friends and family and it was then that I started getting the stories. Myneighbour, an Indian Airlines pilot had started from the airport at 2 p.m., andwas struggling through neck-deep water, having long abandoned his car. Anotherfriend downtown was busy arranging food for his staff staying back in officefor the night. There were reports of parents looking for children returning fromschool.

We made valiant attempts to find alternative routes off the main road but itwas the same story everywhere. Waters a few feet high on all roads across thecity simply stopped the vehicles from going through. I saw buses and truckstrying to power their way through and then sputtering and coming to astandstill. Vehicles filled up every inch of road and pavement and all pointednorth. I was having nightmares of being able to surmount the waters first andthen the inevitable traffic chaos. I silently cursed the traffic police. Onregular days they do a sterling job in shepherding traffic through, in oftentrying and harsh conditions. But they were hardly to be seen anywhere today. Notthat they could have done much anyway. But at least they could have tried todirect the traffic in a more ordered fashion and perhaps maintained one lane foroncoming traffic.

My journey during the night, meanwhile, if I were to use the word, continued.We were more or less pushed along in this conveyor-belt traffic and finallyground to a halt at 2 a.m. in the morning in Wadala. A suburb, not far from themain transport interchange at Dadar, which I thought, looking around, so wellrepresented the paradox that is Mumbai. Leafy surroundings with peaceful four-storeyedresidential buildings from the old times, and large schools with playgrounds(now you don’t find many in Mumbai) sit together with a main truck thoroughfareand a truck terminal and some nasty chemical factories and storages around thecorner.

I slept for an hour and after some fidgeting around took a walk towards themain highway. I waded through half a kilometer of waist-high water, crossinghalf-submerged taxis, brightly led buses with passengers dozing off, people halfdazed in a stupor inside their cars, the occasional car stereo belting out songsand only a few people outside, mostly wandering around aimlessly. Many cars werewithout anyone inside, their owners having given up any thought of driving home,they must have simply walked. But the real shock, visually, was on the mainhighway. The flyover, from one end to the other, was one silent mass ofvehicles, literally at each other’s throats. But it was the sheer silence allaround and the darkness, inspite of the hundreds of vehicles and thousands ofpeople on that one flyover, that was so striking. And it reminded me of my threeyear old’s toy set of a playground with stationary vehicles and men and theway we just used to move them around. And that’s what I thought in an instant- I can move around these cars and people and play around, and there still willnot be any life. It all seemed so unreal and I could visualize the same sceneall across the city and I thought - this city is for once nothing but one largeplayground. And my earlier picture of a conveyor-belt like movement of trafficonly seemed to enhance this playground kind of spectacle.

I went back to tell my driver to leave the car and walk with me but he wantedto catch up on sleep and stay put for a while longer. So I walked. I wadedthrough water. First with tens of people at 5 a.m., sticking together in themiddle of the road at the divider to dodge unseen potholes and more dangerously,open manholes which are deathtraps for many every year during the monsoons. Thenthere were hundreds of peoples at 6 a.m. Now people were talking more,exchanging their tales of the beastly night past.

With daylight, hope andoptimism seemed to make a natural return. At 7 a.m., there were thousandstrudging across the Eastern Express Highway, now shouts of Ganpati Bappa Moryafilled the air from beneath a canopy of umbrellas which defiantly held backthe rain. On the way, we saw cars submerged, trucks abandoned, autorickshawswith roofs barely visible under water. The highway for a large part is a wholeseries of flyovers. And I saw the same sights everywhere. Cars and people piledup everywhere on the flyover, and water, water often waist deep, in between theflyovers - the one arresting image was an ambulance stranded on the road withthe driver fast asleep in his seat, his face gently cooled by the rain fallingon his face through the open window. I wonder about the chances of survival ofany medical emergency case in these circumstances. Another image I carry is theincongruous sight of four garbage trucks rushing through the waters and gettingroundly cursed by all of us, not for representing the sole movement on theroads, but for the waves they created as the already waist-deep water reachedour necks.

I finally got off the highway and onto roads with no waterlogging. And lookedfor a taxi or autorickshaw to take me home.There were none, bar the occasionalfurtive vehicle which sped along with passengers who would doubtless have had tocough up a lot of money to get a seat. So with feet sore from walking in myleather shoes for five hours, I finally made it home and to a welcome rest.

I was among the lucky ones to have reached home in a day. The stories keptcoming in. Of schoolchildren stranded overnight in schools. Of office goershaving spent the night in office and preparing for another. Of animal carcassesand dead bodies floating on the runway of the Chattrapati Shivaji InternationalAirport. Of the airport and train stations overflowing with people. Of peopleexpecting friends and family from outstation trains having no idea of where togo in the first place as there was no information on where which train hadstopped. My driver got the car back somehow by evening, he went home to find hisfirst-floor home flooded, at least his family had managed to find refuge in anupper floor. Many others were not as fortunate. The cleaner of the buildingbroke down as she narrated how she and her family was on the streets after homeswere washed away. We immediately put together some clothes and money. There willbe tens of thousands of more such homeless. As always in any such disaster, it’sthe poor who are the hardest hit.

I have spent 15 years in Mumbai, I haven’t seen the city as crippled. Threedays on, trains are gradually being put into service, the first flight in 3 daystook off this afternoon. My neighbour, a pilot with Indian Airlines, was simplyasked to get to the airport ASAP, destination unknown. Our cable connection wasnot working so we could not catch up on news on TV. We relied on the radio andtelephone for updates. Many buildings in suburbs were without electricity, thewater to our building was cut off this morning. We had no milk and newspaperyesterday. Today’s newspaper carried the gruesome pictures of dead andwounded, and the usual noises from the politicians including a statement by theCM that the drainage system was not to blame. Please, Mr. Deshmukh, spare us willyou, do you take us for morons? Will you just get on with the job of restoringnormalcy? I cringed at the last page of the newspaper which carried the usualceleb-speak of where the city’s movers and shakers were held up in the rains.Please, please, Mr. Editor, for once, could you not spare us the Page 3 trashyou subject us to ever so relentlessly?

The city has been battered as it never was. No doubt it will be back tobusiness as usual very soon. The stock market still went up the day after. But Ihope this disaster serves as a reality check as well for all the big plans for Mumbaithat our politicians have been mouthing around. Rest assured, we willnever see a Shanghai in Mumbai in this generation or the next, unless the cityis physically shifted say, 50 or100 kilometers away. The current infrastructure is acomplete mess. An international airport which is bluntly speaking, a joke. Anantiquated water and sewer system which remains largely inaccessible beneath allthe rampant construction of the city. Roads on which the only addition areflyovers which simply speed up vehicles for a couple of minutes and then pilethem up on the same old bottlenecks. Railways, where every available second hasbeen squeezed out and the system can take no more.

There needs to be an element of planning in urban regeneration, so sadlysacrificed in the pursuit of money. I stay in the residential area of RahejaVihar in Powai, a concrete jungle of 40 buildings with not a single decent park,the most recent blasphemy being the school playground being taken over for theconstruction of a residential tower.I don’t blame the builders.They arebusinessmen. It is the administration which is to blame, but ironically, maybethis is its idea for becoming profitable and more business-like. Nevertheless,the concrete continues to suck out the air from the city’s lungs and the waterfrom its body and will finally take life from its soul.

The middle class continues to power the economy as the current generation,having never known of luxuries in its growing up, splurges as if there is notomorrow. But the 200 million middle class is nothing compared to the 700million poor. Unless the growing rich-poor divide is arrested and reversed, andthe poor have more opportunity and their children have an education, the countrycannot make real progress. Deeper structural problems remain unaddressed - jobsneed to be created in rural areas and small towns, to prevent pressure on urbanresources. The country’s rich natural resources, its flora and fauna, continueto be frittered away on a short-term orgy of get-rich-now-forget-the-futureattitude.

There is today no more concrete (pardon this over-used word) example of therich-poor divide than the teeming, bursting, chaotic metropolis of Mumbai. Mr.Deshmukh, there is no grass or mud or earth left in the city to absorbrainwater. On concrete, water defies gravity and travels upwards.

Satish Raju, an IITian, when not wading through water-clogged Mumbai, works in reinsurance business.