Shyam G. Menon

A cook sitting outside his hotel on one of those flooded streets of Mumbai on Wednesday. — Paul Naronha

Mumbai , July 27

IT was a deluge that respected no rules and inconvenienced all. The music group Traffic's Dear Mr Fantasy was still a prayer to escape monotony when the morning's steady drizzle grew into a veritable curtain of water. Tuesday late afternoon, it touched its peak. Some time past three, Mumbai's suburban trains began to stop. From then on, it was a tailspin to being marooned; a city stretched North-South and addicted to daily travel sank into the clutch of gray inertia.

It had happened before; almost every monsoon the resilient Mumbaikar prepares for that rare confluence of heavy rains and high tide, which choke the city with seawater backing up into its drains. For a couple of years, the railways even appeared to be winning against the rains; very few disruptions on the main three lines. But this time around the signs were too ominous for comfort - rains heralded by flash floods elsewhere in Maharashtra, torrential downpour by Tuesday evening, suburban trains arrested in their tracks, cancellation of flights and an airport in pitch darkness.

Instinct took over, and the Mumbaikar trapped at one end of his daily commute pressed to reach the other. What followed was traffic jams, processions of people walking home and more importantly, in the race against transport clogs, family members stuck in transit away from each other.

Compounding the confusion was the expected breakdown of telephone lines, but the most unexpected collapse of the city's mobile phone network. With electricity down or switched off in many parts it also meant the slow but sure failure of mobile phones.

It left a trail of people with phone numbers but who couldn't be contacted; messages that landed but couldn't be replied to and voices that faded before their location could be ascertained. Sure enough the marooning of July 26 gained an edge of tension unseen in previous floods. The waters had moved in fast, dangerously deep in areas and affecting too many lives for the usual photograph of children playing in flooded streets.

It is pointless to say who panicked and who didn't, but as with all things in this city, beyond a limit its residents accept the inevitable; then proceed to mock it using that very acceptance as weapon. Groups of stranded people, colleagues forced to stay over at offices — all evolve their own support systems, pool resources to communicate, comfort the alarmed and generally stay happy till the skies brighten and their fate is clearer.

Tuesday was no different. From a colleague whose parents informed of their almost totally sunk flat to a friend with father, sister and mother in different corners and all out of reach - worry was palpable. Yet, the same people laughed along, for tomorrow is in the future, to be tackled once the rains have stopped and the trains have resumed. It echoed the prayer that had played in ones' ears before the heavens opened up in full force.

Dear Mr Fantasy, play us a tune

Something to make us all happy,

Do anything; take us out of this gloom.

Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy

You are the one who can make us all laugh

But doing that, you break out in tears

Please don't be sad, if it was a straight life you had

We wouldn't have known you all these years.

Unlike in the past, a genuine touch of pathos bordered the city's frail existence on Wednesday. As some drove the Sensex to record high or kept AGMs on schedule, a sliver of regret surfaced. Couldn't they have allowed for the wounds to heal first? For the one who cried making us all laugh, to regain her composure? Likely irrelevant for amidst the deluge itself there was profit for business — restaurants that ran out of food and garment retailers who did brisk sales.

So, till we sing that prayer next; and surrender to profits.

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