Mumbai—B(a)had mein jaein!
27th July was probably a remarkable day in that it was probably the first time in years that the city came to a halt—and how! It perhaps did not in 1993 … it doesn’t completely for those “strikes” courtesy the Shiv Sena, and hence enforced more or less completely. So obviously there is one thing that one can be sure of—no matter what… the city never stops. For anyone. Ever.
The title for this post came from the extremely witty and bang-on ‘Amul Butter’ Ad Hoarding, that have in their own right become a legend. Well so what is the story of the 27th July. Nothing too fantastic really, but I happened to be stuck in the middle of it all, & had a firsthand experience of the catastrophe that was.
It did not just rain—it poured! This is probably the first time that I realized the meaning of the phrase ‘raining cats and dogs’. It started of like any rainy day in Mumbai… a downpour that can be very heavy to say the least. So what seemed like any other day changed in character quite slowly and deviously. Nobody probably realized till late afternoon when the water-logging got to be quite serious and the life lines of the city—the local trains were brought to a complete standstill. Not just the tracks but the stations at many places were submerged in good measure. Then was the turn of the roads. Traffic which was slow moving turned to Gordian knots as some tried to make a headway. I managed to get home safely after walking in knee deep water, and after taking six hours for what would ordinarily have taken just 45mins! What was merely a difficult situation for me was going to unfold to be a nightmare for many people. Things went from bad to worse in many parts. The suburb was without lights, water and transport for a long time. The problem started in the following days as the system failed to tackle the problem, government machinery was slow and clueless in most of the measures it undertook. If things were so bad I cannot comprehend the reality of the situation in parts of rural areas which underwent more or less the same fate. Response was knee-jerk reaction and the administration was roundly lambasted. That was then. In spite of the fact that we have been facing crises after crises in some form or the other for ages now we still have no organized way of tackling the situation, even as I type this worse scenes unfold in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Relief in the state of J&K perhaps is just as worse in spite of the fact that winter is settling in and we’re talking about the Himalayas here! What does it take for the politicians to stop merely announce packages for victim’s in the train mishap and take concrete measures, for the bureaucrats to act decisively and promptly in an organized fashion, for middle men not to finagle the donated items, for others to simply not misappropriate the relief funds?
The only thing that keeps the common man going perhaps is his indomitable spirit and the fact than at least here in India, one person helps out as one human to another.
So even if for all those dastardly buggers who we elect into office fail to act and give sound bites to the media, even when inundated it is the simple folk who get themselves out of the morass they find themselves in. Inundated in a Bahad(flood) or not, if we did it then to get the Brits out, we do it to get our rights now more and more through PIL's (Public Interest Litigations) and those guys did to Lalu in Bihar recently - you can bet on one thing forsure... when we decide to the indian people sure as hell can and will say "...tum bhad mein jao!"
we're not going to hell yet...
The title for this post came from the extremely witty and bang-on ‘Amul Butter’ Ad Hoarding, that have in their own right become a legend. Well so what is the story of the 27th July. Nothing too fantastic really, but I happened to be stuck in the middle of it all, & had a firsthand experience of the catastrophe that was.
It did not just rain—it poured! This is probably the first time that I realized the meaning of the phrase ‘raining cats and dogs’. It started of like any rainy day in Mumbai… a downpour that can be very heavy to say the least. So what seemed like any other day changed in character quite slowly and deviously. Nobody probably realized till late afternoon when the water-logging got to be quite serious and the life lines of the city—the local trains were brought to a complete standstill. Not just the tracks but the stations at many places were submerged in good measure. Then was the turn of the roads. Traffic which was slow moving turned to Gordian knots as some tried to make a headway. I managed to get home safely after walking in knee deep water, and after taking six hours for what would ordinarily have taken just 45mins! What was merely a difficult situation for me was going to unfold to be a nightmare for many people. Things went from bad to worse in many parts. The suburb was without lights, water and transport for a long time. The problem started in the following days as the system failed to tackle the problem, government machinery was slow and clueless in most of the measures it undertook. If things were so bad I cannot comprehend the reality of the situation in parts of rural areas which underwent more or less the same fate. Response was knee-jerk reaction and the administration was roundly lambasted. That was then. In spite of the fact that we have been facing crises after crises in some form or the other for ages now we still have no organized way of tackling the situation, even as I type this worse scenes unfold in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Relief in the state of J&K perhaps is just as worse in spite of the fact that winter is settling in and we’re talking about the Himalayas here! What does it take for the politicians to stop merely announce packages for victim’s in the train mishap and take concrete measures, for the bureaucrats to act decisively and promptly in an organized fashion, for middle men not to finagle the donated items, for others to simply not misappropriate the relief funds?
The only thing that keeps the common man going perhaps is his indomitable spirit and the fact than at least here in India, one person helps out as one human to another.
So even if for all those dastardly buggers who we elect into office fail to act and give sound bites to the media, even when inundated it is the simple folk who get themselves out of the morass they find themselves in. Inundated in a Bahad(flood) or not, if we did it then to get the Brits out, we do it to get our rights now more and more through PIL's (Public Interest Litigations) and those guys did to Lalu in Bihar recently - you can bet on one thing forsure... when we decide to the indian people sure as hell can and will say "...tum bhad mein jao!"
we're not going to hell yet...
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