A rainy day in Mumbai

 Since yesterday, any news channel you open, its occupied by Mumbai rain.Mumbai was lashed by heaviest ever rain in the month of June. At places it recorded as big as 530 mm of rainfall. Of course, necessary preparations were not in place to tackle such high rainfall. What resulted was a chaos everywhere. The rain disturbed day to day activities of Mumbai city. First and foremost effect was observed on the traveling routes.

 The lifeline of Mumbai is its local train service. If local trains are stopped, every thing stops. That's  what happened yesterday. Most of the railway tracks in the low lying areas were underwater. One snap of Chuna Bhatti station showed water filled till the platform level. There were jokes making round on whatapp saying, "India has developed first train that runs on water. Japan and Germany are jealous of India". 

All the commuters who have to use locals couldn't get out of their starting stations because all the locals were stopped.  Alternative to locals is road way. BEST also has efficient transportation system in Mumbai. Infact at most of the places buses were traveling. But, even these routes were filled with water enough upto the levels of car bumper. At places, even the half of the trucks were seen under water.

 Those roads where there was no water clogging were clogged with all kinds of vehicles. Forget, buses or cars, even two wheelers which otherwise finds it easy to make space to move ahead were stuck at places. And once, you are stuck in this traffic, you are stuck for a big time. You can neither move ahead through this traffic nor can you leave your vehicle on road. The only option was to stay back at home. Those who news early morning, stayed back home.

 But then there are enthusiasts, who wants to convert these moments into adventurous ones. There are many spots in Mumbai where you can see sea water reaching upto roads. Yesterday was also a day for high tide coinciding with the heavy rains. As a result, sea was at its best with tides as high as 4.5 mts hitting the shore. And obviously, there will be mumbaikars who wants to get drenched with these high tides.

But deep inside, sea had turned into monster. It was advised to all the fishermen not to enter the sea. A look of sea from Worli-Bandra sea link would have made one think whether it was right decision to climb up on this route.

Overall, it was an altogether different experience. It could have reached the disastrous stage of July 26, 2005. But some how with all the information available on news, internet, it was possible to tackle the day without any big mishap.

P.S: All the photos were taken from internet.