As I write this, I can see the evening skyline. Half the sky remained a happy colour of blue interspersed with white clouds. The other half had turned a deep shade of blue; clouds pregnant with what could be Mumbai's first monsoon shower.
Over South Mumbai, the sky was clearer. North Mumbaikars would be drenched with at least one hour of good, heavy rain. This division reminded me invaribly of July 26, 2005, a day Mumbaikars will not forget for a long long time. The cloudburst, which brought 944 mm of rain in just a few hours, has perhaps forever changed the meaning of monsoons for Mumbaikars.

On the morning of July 26, blinding rain began around 10 am in northern suburbs. From my flat, I can see a range of hills that divide the western suburbs from the central suburbs in northern part of Mumbai. The rain was so intense that it blanked the hills completely. Every few minutes, I would come out in the balcony, and check the rain. It rained with the same intensity till 1 pm. Three hours of non-stop heavy rain was enough to drown all the low-lying areas along the railway, I calculated, and decided to stay home for the day.

As the wettest day in Mumbai's history weared on, the horror stories started trickling in. First, several subways along the western railway were submerged. Known low lying areas, the subways are usually the first victims, blocking inter-suburban traffic in western suburbs. Then, slowly all three suburban railway lines stopped functioning, with tracks at several key railway stations submerged in thick sheets of water by late afternoon. Due to its unique geography, half of Mumbai's population travels from north to south of the city in the mornings, and returns to north in the evening. So, the office-goers who travelled to South Mumbai early in the morning were stuck with nowhere to go.

But, this day was peculiar. In South Mumbai, it was a normal monsoon day. It rained in the normal range, and there was no major flooding anywhere. South Mumbai had no idea what was unfolding in northern part of the city. In north Mumbai, a crisis was slowly building. The suburbs received an unprecedented 944 mm of rain over a 12 hour period. As flooding increased, the electricity network, the mobile network, and the landline network collapsed. The government machinery woke up to the seriousness of the problem later in the evening. By then, it was impossible to mount an effective rescue operation. It was left to Mumbai citizens to deal with the problem.

In Air India Colony, a large cluster of staff quarters for Air India and Indian personnel, near the Mumbai airport,
the problem was huge. A traditional low-lying area, the colony's ground floor tenements were submerged and the water was about to enter the flats on the first floor. A string of double decker buses were stuck in the water, with commuters waiting on the top of the buses in pitch darkness. Citizens like Neil Gaekwad, a young sportsman and an expert swimmer, then devised their ingenous rescue plan, and worked over night to save lives. Families staying closest to the crisis points threw open their homes to complete strangers, providing them water, food, and medical aid.

Over the next two to three days, Mumbai was counting its dead. Mumbai's airport remained completely shut for 30 days, with 700 flights cancelled during this period. Financial losses of several hundred crore were reported. The death toll crossed 400 with with 233 deaths due to drowning, 120 in landslides, and 24 in a strange stampede caused by the rumour of tsunami. A month later, a disease outbreak in submerged parts of delige killed another 500.

Two years later, memories of that bloody monsoon still haunt the city. With Vilasrao Deshmukh government taking merely cosmetic measures to deal with another emergency of its kind, Mumbai and its people are virtually on their own if it experiences another deluge. The choked MIthi River has been cleaned and widened, but
will that be enough to prevent flooding. Unrestricted construction boom has destroyed huge tracts of mangroves, which naturally drain flood waters. But, unscrupulous builders continue to go unpunished. There has been no change in the capacity of storm water drains in suburbs. No attempt has been made to expand the existing bandwith of the mobile network, which collapses in every emergency creating an unprecedented communication chaos.

A 60-member rescue team has been formed to react to emergencies. New rescue equipment has been purchased an distributed including motorboats, floating stretchers, pneumatic lifting airbags, water proof torches, wet suits, inflatable life jackets, and rocket launchers that can fire U-shaped life jackets. Rain guages have been installed at 26 fire stations lying in traditional flood-prone areas, with 11 of them equipment with rocket launchers in case of 2005-like flooding. The guages have been connected to the main disatser control room in the municipal headquarter. The municipal corporation has readied 48 dumpers and 24 earth movers in areas where landslides occur.

But, will this be enough. Will Mumbai survive this monsoon? Frankly, I don't know.