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Showed up by the Floods

The flash floods on Terrible Tuesday and afterwards showed us what we are really like .

Two days after Terrible Tuesday, Mumbai is still grappling with hundreds of deaths, floating bodies, trapped bodies, lack of water, no power, flooded houses, overflowing toilets, crippled rail networks and destroyed buses. But does that stop the Mumbaikar from going to work? Of course not. Thursday saw thousands making the trudge to work using whatever means of transportation they could find. 

Conscientiousness, they call it. Insanity, I say. Would the world end if the city curled up for a few days and licked its wounds? The trauma of Terrible Tuesday is immeasurable. Trudging through the flooded streets for hours at end, watching helplessly as people float away, rubbing shoulders with drifting corpses and finally getting home to overflowing toilets, no water and electricity—all of this it would seem is all in a day’s work.

Does the city even pause to ask where was the administration and the so-called disaster management? Or why are people still trapped and not rescued? Why rumours abound and scores die in ensuing stampedes? No, no one asks these uncomfortable questions. The media does it so half-heartedly that I’m sure it does not even register in the right quarters. 

Everybody just pretends everything is normal, applauds the spirit of Mumbai and hauls themselves to work. And congratulate themselves some more. Why are we pretending that what we just endured is not a disaster of the first order? And that we need time and energy to rebuild our lives.

Have we learnt any lessons from this disaster? How is Mumbai going to be prepared the next time something like this happens? Will we have a disaster management cell by then, will there be someone to lead the city out of calamity? Will there be a communication system in place?

One lesson I learnt was how soft we, the middle class, have got. We are so used to plush, comfortable lives that at the first hint of trouble no one knows how to switch to survival mode. We are so used to cellphones and cars that we have no alternative communication plans in place. How many people have the landline numbers of their neighbours? When was the last time we traveled in a BEST bus? Do we even know the routes so that we at least travel a bit closer to our homes using the buses that are running?

How may people trudged out of their offices at 6.00 PM on Tuesday when water was chest high hoping to catch a cab? If they were in touch with reality and had any ideas of how low-lying areas behave in the rains they would have stayed put and ventured out when it was safe.

For that matter, how many middle class, gaadiwallahs helped other trapped people? Rather, they had to be rescued by the poor and the destitute. It’s the destitute and the poor (the city did its best to demolish their houses by the way) who probably did not lose their nerve. They were the ones directing traffic and pulling the stranded to safety. 

They were the ones running up and down roads and telling the gaadiwallahs which routes were impassable and which lanes were operational while the rich gaadiwallahs hunkered in their cars clueless about what to do. The city could have used some resourcefulness to cope with the situation. Agreed, the administration was nowhere in sight and people were left on their own. But how many of us were even remotely prepared to deal with the situation? Forget rescuing others, we were dependent on the ingenuity of the street dwellers to save us.

Forget dealing with disaster. We cannot even deal with lack of basic amenities like water, power and electricity. There is no water in our society and is not likely to be for the next two-three days. The society has ordered cartons of Bisleri directly from the company. The cartons have arrived and waiting on the ground floor. All the residents of all seven floors are waiting on their respective landings for the cartons to appear at their doorstep by magic. They are calling out to passing maids and raddiwallahs to help them out. Surprise, surprise, they oblige. Out of pity. Do they even show any contempt? None whatsoever. And so our rich Mumbaikar waits in his plush home while minions ferry the Bisleri to his house. And then we brazenly take credit for Mumbai’s spirit and courage.