startling banals

Read Evenstar's passionate post on NGC's programme on Mumbai. Reminded me of the 26th July 2005 deluge. What a day it was! Was relaxing at a friend's room in Hostel 8(Woodlands :)) in IIT. At around noon the water started to rise and within minutes Powai lake was in his room with mud, plants, insects and even a snake in his neighbour's room. Packed his computer and mattress to the loft and waded to Staff Canteen and spent a record 18 hours there. The water was literally pouring (944 mm in 24 hours), the road was like a river of tremendous force and the power was gone. It was the first day of classes of the autumn semester for the institute and what a welcome for the freshies! Later came to know about the horrible human loss in Bombay and the many stories of bravery (one assistant police inspector Kadam's story and a Koli lifeguard's story were really filmily heroic), how the BEST and railway people did their duty and BMC's unpreparedness.

Wikipedia's entry
Photographs from 26/7
Cloudburst Mumbai blog
Oulook's "Heroes from hell" issue(create a login)

Weeee. I'm glad that my blog reminded you of something. So what if it was something negative....

:-)

I heard similar stories from everyone back in mumbai. When I was in mumbai in september, and at lilavati hospital I saw this printout pasted at few places comparing mumbai deluge to Hurricane katrina and how it boasted about mumbai spirit and etc. I thought that comparison was totally wrong.. I mean it was not an apples to apples comparison! Anyways even I collected pics from all newspapers I could and have them at one place

I was also with the writer of this topic..:-) We played carrom board and the writer roamed in IIT in lungi all around...

its ironic..but the first ever entry on my blog is abt my experience on 26/7...

check it out!

we also had quite some fun that night, our whole wing (some 15 ppl) went around in barmudas and shorts around the insti. Though later when we came to know of the deaths, of the enormity of the problem, we felt a little guilty.