mumbai diaries - 26th july at deonar

I was among the fortunate few who witnessed the momentous day in the annals of Mumbai folklore, the flooding on 26^th July. I was not affected by it in the first person, sitting peacefully at a friend’s place in the suburb Deonar, which is on higher altitude than most parts of the city. However, when I ventured out after the unprecedented downpour had stopped; I witnessed another instance of the peculiarities of the city’s denizens. On a small chai shop, there was a throng of people, soaked from top to bottom, and each desperately vying for attention. They seemed genuinely pleased with themselves, as if they were describing a historic feat of theirs rather than a calamitous situation. Each had a story to tell, about how he or she waded through knee deep water to walk five or six kms, and how there were numerous others doing the same. It’d be a bit insensitive to make fun of a situation which involved the loss of numerous lives, but one can’t help but marvel at the city’s masochistic tendencies. What particularly baffled me was that a big number of these sufferers could actually have avoided the deluge if they had chosen to stay indoors. It was not as if it was a sudden flooding which happened without anyone’s knowledge. It was a gradual build-up over a period of four to five hours, which was continuously being televised and almost everyone was aware of the grim situation before embarking on their adventures. And in the discussions which followed, on the streets, in homes, on television, each individual was emphatically trying to go one up on each other. And those who missed being in action invariably started feeling deprived and left-out, with no tale to tell. Even so many years down the line, you can detect an inexplicable pride saying “I was there on that day”.