As pictures began to flood television screens late on July 26, it was clear that it was an event Mumbai-not unused to disasters, man-made or natural-was not prepared to handle. The city was battered by the heaviest rainfall recorded in India, shutting down the country's financial hub, snapping communication and power lines, closing airports and marooning lakhs. At least 108 people were killed in two days of crippling rains-25 drowning after being trapped in their cars-and another 190 were feared buried in landslides. Civic and public transport services collapsed and 5,000 army troops had to be deployed after the sudden rains measuring 94.4 cm (37.1 in) in a single day stranded tens of thousands of people. Food packets had to be air-dropped from helicopters, perhaps for the first time in a metro.

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RAGE OF THE HEAVENS: Two days of rains turned Mumbai's streets into rivers, stranding thousands and bringing the city to its knees

"Even during a heavy monsoon, most cities in India don't receive this kind of rain in a year. It is the highest ever recorded rain in the country's history,'' says R.V. Sharma, director, Meteorological Department. India's previous heaviest rainfall, recorded on July 12, 1910 at Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, one of the rainiest places on earth, was 83.82 cm (33 in).

That the state Government was caught napping is an understatement. Despite the previous week's heavy rains in Goa, Pune, Raigad and Thane which caused enormous damage, the Government failed to prepare for an impending crisis. So while the rains, which started early Tuesday morning, brought transport, telecom and power networks to a grinding halt by afternoon, the state machinery and Mumbai's Disaster Management Authority took 24 hours to swing into action. The incessant downpour disrupted the local train services at around 3 p.m., well before rush hour. By Wednesday, nearly 1.5 lakh people were stranded at railway stations across Mumbai. With the collapse of the city's main transport network, Mumbaikars were left with no choice but to wade their own way back home. The result was pandemonium on streets with no traffic policemen to control the chaos. The roads remained choked all night, leaving thousands stranded, and the two main highways were inundated. Traffic moved at a snail's pace. The trip from Nariman Point, the city's business hub, to Bandra took over eight hours; it normally takes 45 minutes. While all highways leading to Mumbai were closed, the domestic and international airports, among the busiest in the country, were shut down. Landslides were rampant at Lonavala and on the express highway to Pune. Among the worst hit were the low-lying areas of Kurla, Santa Cruz, Mahim, Dadar, Wadala, Sion Circle, Bandra and Girgaum, where the water level touched 12 ft. Cut off from the outside world, Mumbai, overnight, became an island of mass misery.

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FLOOD FURY: Some took shelter at stations (top) while others walked or formed human chains to get home

"Never before in Mumbai's history has this happened," says Mumbai Police Commissioner A.N. Roy. "Our top priority is to rescue the stranded people." Among these were hundreds of children forced to spend the night in suburban schools. A frantic Jayant Shah walked through the night from his downtown office to reach his daughter. "She was safer in school, but I was terrified as I didn't know where she was," he said. Others were less lucky. On Wednesday morning, with the water receding, bodies of schoolchildren were being recovered from low-lying areas. The death toll is likely to climb higher. Even Bal Thackeray's Bandra residence was virtually submerged and he was saved by the navy. Another Bandra couple and son were found unconscious in a car and were pulled out by passers-by. Only the mother and son survived; the father's funeral was held on Wednesday.

Like many others, Tushar Joshi, a reporter with Mid-Day, found himself walking back to his office at night in the low-lying areas of Lalbaug-Parel in central Mumbai, where cars and buses were floating in water. He was part of a human chain trying to navigate towards Parel. "It was pitch dark and we couldn't see where we were going," he says. "A little boy hanging on to his sister was swept across the road. People panicked but couldn't stop him. I saw a bus conductor trying to save him, but don't know what became of him. It was terrifying." Joshi reached his office at around 11 p.m. where, like 10 lakh other Mumbaikers, he spent the night.

Star TV boss Peter Mukherjea was forced to spend 16 hours in his car. Similarly, for Rajesh Khubchandani, owner of a cassette factory, it was a nightmare. When he found water flooding his car, he abandoned it and climbed atop a traffic island. The next morning, he saw two bodies floating by. Two more bodies were recovered from a nearby car, the couple apparently having died after inhaling fumes in the closed and idling vehicle. There were women who spent 20 hours on the top deck of buses, with local residents giving them water and biscuits. The state Government shed its paralysis only a day later, with Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh seeking the support of the defence forces. Two naval helicopters were finally deployed for rescue operations but other choppers were grounded at Juhu because of waterlogging. The ONGC oil rig fire off Mumbai's coast late on Wednesday night only added to the pressure.

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LOOKING FOR COVER: While umbrellas were no match for the downpour, (top), Mumbaikars waded through the water or resorted to novel means of transport

The corporates, however, rallied around their employees who were forced to spend the night in offices. Deutsche Bank, Kotak and ICICI Securities even organised a stay at hotels for all the employees who could not go back home. Other companies like the HLL threw open its doors to 200 staffers and their families, with all terraced offices and conference rooms transformed into makeshift homes.

Others, however, had to contend with spending the night on the roads or without power. Due to waterlogging, power distribution company Reliance Energy, which supplies electricity to suburban Mumbai, shut down power supply to most suburbs from Bandra to Borivli to prevent short circuits and accidents. This had a domino effect on the mobile network. With few mobile companies equipped with diesel generators, the cell-phone services were hit across Mumbai.

So lyricist Javed Akhtar had a tough time trying to contact Mumbai from Delhi, where he had gone for a three-hour meeting, and ended up spending three days in a hotel. Actor Shah Rukh Khan, who was in Mumbai, decided to work through the night. For the first time, he says, he saw "how people could lose all they had in a moment just because it rained". Added Rohan Sippy, who had to cancel three days of shooting for Bluff Master starring Abhishek Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra: "It was a disaster for the city which until recently was being compared with Shanghai."

By the morning of July 28, the city started slowly limping back to some semblance of normality. Local train services resumed in select areas but the airport stayed shut and central railway services suspended. With the city still marooned, the chief minister declared July 27 and July 28 as holidays and asked people to stay home.

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FULL STOP: The traffic came to a standstill at the Dharavi junction, the main artery leading to the Mumbai airport

The deluge had a ripple effect. Some banks based in Mumbai had to shut down transactions and were unable to service ATMs across India after their mainframes and other equipment were waterlogged. According to FICCI, the rains have inflicted massive losses worth around Rs 1,700 crore, as manufacturing and other industrial activity in the state came to a standstill. Mumbai alone has suffered a loss in business income and property damage of Rs 500 crore, official estimates say. And unless the road, rail and air connectivity are restored on a war footing, the losses could mount and trade between the region and other parts of the country will be severely affected.

The disaster, though unprecedented, effectively captures the city's decline and official apathy, brought to the fore many times in the past. The last development plan for the city was passed by the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) in 1987. Since then, the BMC has presided over a disaster waiting to happen. While the city's population has increased from seven million to 16 million, open spaces have shrunk to accommodate the powerful, politically connected builders' lobby. Planning for the future has been held hostage to the growth of slums, which have swelled from 23 per cent of Mumbai's population to over 40 per cent. The strain on the existing systems has become unbearable. The city's lifeline is its public transport. Local trains run every three minutes and ferry 4.5 million passengers daily. Millions of people also commute by buses every day. The city is dependent on two arterial roads, but nothing has been done to improve them or ease congestion.

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RIDE OF A LIFETIME: People clambered on to high vehicles, in this case a tanker, to reach their destinations

The BMC's budget is just under Rs 7,000 crore, most of which goes into salaries and debt servicing. So new investment is negligible. As a result, sanitation has suffered and drainage is clogged. Mumbai's drainage system, the cause of all the mayhem, is 150 years old, designed to handle 2.5 cm of rain every hour. The 94.4 cm of rain that fell in a day was too much for the antiquated system to cope with. The system is equipped to drain water into the sea only if there is no high tide.

The city contributes over Rs 40,000 crore in revenue to the Central government, houses the headquarters of almost all major corporations, and yet is way behind Delhi in terms of the money pumped in to improve infrastructure and services. One reason is that a majority of Maharashtra's political elite has come from the rural areas, in particular the sugar belt. Only one recent chief minister, Manohar Joshi, belongs to Mumbai.

At the end of the day, Mumbai is a private-sector city. The civic-minded corporate sector usually takes the lead in ensuring that the city gets on with life and commerce regardless of the political reaction. But the lessons are grim. The last time Mumbai faced a major crisis-the 1993 serial bomb blasts-it was a man-made disaster. In many ways, so is this. For all its corporate muscle and financial stakes, there is a huge gap between aspiration and reality. Mumbai has, of late, been bragging about being another Shanghai. It took just one night's rain to turn that dream into a nightmare.

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