That day still haunts me!

26/7 Deluge

26^th July’05, Tuesday around 3-30pm. I was preparing for my hindi exam to be held on 27^th. Suddenly I heard loud thundering and heavy rains captured the city of mumbai within thirty minutes. Streets flooded with rain water and vehicles emerged in deep sea like ponds, the first scenes I saw that day were in the evening. I had never imagined it to become as big as I saw it two days later on television.

No lights no communication and water everywhere. People were stranded on streets and survival was as difficult as life itself. Small school students fell prey to the floods, water entered houses and numerous people lost their lives. From small school children to old people, no one could be traced. The networks were jammed, communication was cut off competely. Those two days were like complete savage ones, back to stone age. I had never seen mumbai paralysed like it was during those two days. When I heard about deaths and people losing their near and dear ones, I was baffled and shaken to the face the harsh facts.

Though I love rains, I always have that fear, something inside me prays not to let me see the rains disrupting life in mumbai. The destruction to life and property is huge and beyond measure, it stops the running life of mumbai. I won’t be able to accept anything like this again in future, its not only shameful for the government but also painful for the citizens. How I always hope rains may come but not more than needed!

I am writing this because I dont want to forget those two days when a wife lost her husband, a mother lost her child, a father saw his son dead, and a child kept waiting to see his father for a lifetime. It hurts to know that we lost so many people to nature’s folly. I didn’t lose any immediate relative. But I did hear of lot of family friends who lost someone.

 Am I waiting for something like this to happen again? No ways! But then what measure have we taken to combat this situation in future? Nothing major , sadly even now and then with little heavy showers the life in mumbai is disrupted. Trains run late, flights run behind the schedule and cars and buses get struck in bad traffic. Is this what our future will hold too? Same things? Same problems? Don’t we have brains to forsee the grave problems of near future? Dadar station needs immediate reconstruction, have you seen the debris outside it? Yuk yuk!!! And the illegal vendors outside taking over more than half of the area, footpaths which were once built don’t even exist! Imagine the situation after five years, it will be so damn bad.... right now there’s no place to park your cars in that area, after five years cars will be stopped from going there at all, ‘cause there will be no space!

I hope all mumbaittes one day see these problems. Instead of blaming the BMC we should stand up ourselves, the city infrastructure is in a very bad shape. We can’t change the whole scenario but we can take steps to bring in sanitation and proper hygiene.

And I hope for this we aren’t waiting for another 26/7. Lighting candles for a day or two and then getting back to normal is what we are used to doing. This should be stopped, emotional alliance is not the solution to long term problems of this city. We should stand up, and collectively thrive to bring in change.

“I am the change I want to bring in.”