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So the levee did break

8/29/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
 The sounds outside our bedroom are different today. For the first time in four days it's not raining. Crows are cawing and another bird starts chirping, tentatively at first. One of the first buses of the day drives along General Bhosale Marg, towards Mantralaya.  The bell sounds at the fire brigade, round the corner from our house.
Mumbai had endured days of non stop rain, making up for the shortfall of the past months, but then yesterday the levee almost did break, with almost 300 mm of rain falling in twenty four hours, ten times the normal amount.
The TV is showing images of thousands of workers walking along flyovers, trying to get home. Maharashtrian women, their trademark saris tied up like a dhoti, walking with fierce determination, 35 kilometers to go to get home. Thirty men stand in a truck, holding on to ropes to keep standing. The driver picked them up at Marine Lines and is offering them a free ride to Mulund, in the North. Western and Central railway lines halted service. Kumud spent five hours to Worli and back in order to pick Tarini up, normally a thirty minute ride each way.
KEM (King Edward Memorial) Hospital was flooded yesterday. A year ago my father, his short term memory fading fast,  recounted how as a young doctor at KEM Hospital in Parel he'd have to walk, shoes in hand, trousers rolled up, to get to work during the monsoon. "The water flows down from Parel to Lower Parel to Worli during the monsoon", he remembered. Sixty years later the water still flows from Parel to Lower Parel and on to Worli, as it should, and KEM Hospital still gets flooded, as it shouldn't.

Everyone remembers July 26 2005, the year when heavy rains combined with clogged drains and high tide immersed the city. Kumud's nephew, now an investment banker in Chicago, was stuck in his schoolbus for twelve hours that day. 1000 people died.

At $3.8 billion the BMC, Mumbai's municipal council, has a budget larger than that of any other city in Asia. 28 of the 58 projects promised after the 2005 deluge, and meant to prevent another such as yesterday, are pending, incomplete.
The sun has just peeped out but the city is virtually empty with everyone at home, drying their feathers.

1 Comment
Dr Harish Sharma (Phd)
9/20/2017 10:55:16 am

It is so good To read your blog after such a long time
Again today my sister-in-law show me that new post written by Sanjay Tiwari ji
This time post come In the month of August and I am reading it in the month of September very big delay by me because I am right now travelling on education Drive About the rivers the initiative is known as rally for Rivers. it is so surprising to see the irony that there is one city Mumbai which have so much of water due to the rains every year and then there are states like Rajasthan where there is so scarcity of water every year I hope we would be able to come up with a solution solution in which Water from access areas can be transferred to areas with less water.
Bahu acha laga aapka blog aaj ek baar fir se dekhke.

Main jald aaonga iss baar Mumbai khud aapse milne. aap jab banaras aaye the tab mil nahi paye the

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    About

    This blog documents our arrival in Mumbai from Chicago and our attempts to make this city home, our experience with finding housing, the kids’ first days at school, shopping, 30 year - old taxis, inundation by monsoon rains, street side shopping and boutiques, slums and $3 million apartments owned by rich playboys.

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