Time spent under water

That’s the one word that best sums up the qualities of Mumbai’s ‘teeming millions’, seeing their conduct on Deluge Tuesday. As thousands of us waded through pelvic-high dirty water close to midnight, with the rain beating down furiously, its effect made more frightening by lightning and thunder, any of the following could have happened, sending us all to sure death by drowning: a stampede, panic attacks, brawls, mass molestation. None of these did, though the conditions for all of them were ripe. Many of us had already been walking over 10 km for four hours, having tried unsuccessfully to reach home by public/private transport. We passed traffic jams stretching through entire suburbs. Nobody had eaten dinner, and though at some places not so deep under water, chaat shops beckoned us, few stopped, so desperate were we to get home.

Surely deliverance would be just round the corner; surely the traffic a little ahead would be moving. But by midnight, we knew this would be a night without end, that we would be walking till we reached our doorsteps. Young men were shouting ‘Ganpati Bappa Morya’ in as full-throated a manner as they do during the Ganpati festival; meant to restore spirits, these raucous yells spelt doom for those not at ease with mass forms of worship, conjuring up visions of drunken, jostling mobs. But there was no jostling, not even when hundreds had to squeeze two-by-two, between abandoned cars; not even when the sharp points of open umbrellas forced us to take a step backwards. “Please close your umbrellas” — the half-polite, half-irritated request made, went unheeded. Yet, no one showed anger. The wind made the huge rain trees sway threateningly. “It’s going to fall,” yelled one of the young men who seemed to be having the time of their lives. It was a real possibility (90 trees fell), yet no one panicked. This though the crowd included people aged 60-plus with walking sticks.

All this was enough to show what Mumbai’s citizens were made of. But the real test, which they passed with flying colours, was the sight of unescorted young girls walking safely past hordes of men. Be it burqah-clad women, only their eyes visible through their veils, or trendily-clad threesomes from out of town. Not one of them was touched. Finally, the masses who showed this high level of civilised behaviour were not only the sons-of-the-soil, but “outsiders” from all over the country; a wonderful mix of languages giving life to one another.