#365DaysOfWriting – Day Eighty-Nine
Hell hath no fury as Mumbai rains.
Especially if you’re at Hindmata Road. Today, I experienced 10% of what it was like on July 26, 2005.
Today seemed like any other day, to be honest with you. I got a train on time from Andheri station. It was pouring, but nothing happened that was unmanageable.
The ruckus started once I got off at Dadar.
I usually get a cab easily from Dadar. But I waited 20 minutes without any luck – none of the cabs were ready to come to Parel. Fortunately, I bumped into two of my office colleagues, who had ordered an Ola cab. We sat in the cab, but this time, instead of the normal route via two bridges, we decided to go via Hindmata Road. That’s because our regular route was terribly jam-packed. For the first 10 minutes, everything was okay. I even took a photograph of the water-logged road.
Then in the middle of nowhere, our cab broke down.
Water had entered the engine. We took a risk, and it didn’t pay off. Then I took the photo you see above. We decided to roll up our jeans and do the dirty work – wade through the filthy water and walk to work. To top it all, I had the office laptop in my bag – I had to take care of it! There were pumps trying to suck the water from the roads, but the rains weren’t abating. This looked like a repeat of 26/07/2005.
I got to work, almost completely drenched.
I dried myself the best I could, and got to work. There was also a party at work today, and it was a good bit of fun – but nothing could take away from the experience in the morning.