Mumbai: In September 2014, I had reported how the Assamese in riverine areas were coping with the increasing incidents of flooding by adopting the chaang ghor — houses on stilts — from the indigenous Mishing community. On Tuesday, I was scouting for bricks to make stilts to elevate my middle-class possessions. As I pulled aside furniture from the door in the living room, Maa screamed that water was gushing into the bedroom. Soon, it was trickling in through hitherto unknown crevices, rapidly submerging our entire ground-floor flat in a foot of water. A sofa with built-in storage was already under water before we could rescue the upholstery and bedlinen in it. A storage area under a bookshelf went under too; strangely, I can’t remember what’s in there.
How do people in Assam and Bihar leave their homes, put their lives — groceries, documents, photographs, shoes — on their heads, and move to high ground? A man in Assam once told me how his children would hear thunder and cry; they had lived through their roof flying off. It’s not just faraway Assam and rustic Bihar, of course; this happens in Mumbai every year, and those who keep the city alive — the sweepers, delivery boys, shop staff, and many others — live with the fear of water entering their homes.
The water reached 1.5 feet, but then stopped rising, Amidst the flotsam — sandals, a doormat, lost to-do lists, untangled balls of hair — we had time to think. Then the electricity went off, around 5 p.m. Maa wondered aloud if she could go to pee, then laughed. Going to the toilet was as good as just dropping her salwar in the kitchen, next to the fridge. Suddenly, bad sanitation wasn’t about Morigaon in Assam (or Mankhurd). I had become the kind of character I write about as a journalist.
Outside, traffic was at a standstill. Amidst all the cars, there was one BEST bus, overflowing with people. A pop-up from a taxi aggregator’s app on my phone earnestly proclaimed that they were doing their best to put more cars on the road. More cars? How can you ease traffic with more cars? Amid that rising anger, I found room for disdain for the affluent migrants who bring more vehicles into the city, never board a local or a BEST bus, yet proudly call themselves Bombaywallahs.
Soon, on social media, there were messages extolling the Mumbai spirit. I remembered a District Collector in Dhemaji, Assam, who told me that people are resilient because when the elected and the bureaucracy fail them, they have no option but to use their own shoulders to pick up the pieces. Why aren’t we questioning this Mumbai spirit? After drying ourselves, could we channel this spirit towards action against those who continue to fail us? Isn’t it time we sue the Shiv Sena for backing grandiose plans of statues in the sea instead of cleaning up the mess that is the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)? Why do we elect and re-elect them?
That morning, after several calls about a blocked gutter outside, civic officials had come by, but without a pump to clear the blocked sewage. In the evening, we put our own shoulders to work. Santosh, the coconut-seller outside our house, was more concerned about us the wound in his foot; he dug a hole through a backyard wall to create a water discharge route. I think of my grandmother, who would spend evenings in knee-deep water, alone, in her huge house in Guwahati, ignoring the psoriasis on her legs. With a red tub — Maa remembered it waiting for her in the bathroom when she stepped into this flat as a bride, 33 years ago — we bailed out our house.
I put my angst (and a photograph) on social media. Almost immediately, we received a series of calls and messages, offers to ‘just come and stay with us.’ But how could we just leave behind the expensive things that make our lives comfortable? Our fridge was part-submerged, but we were assured of our next meal. Maa wondered about the vendors in Kalina market who have known our family for over three decades: how would they be dealing with this? They are illegal hawkers, they have no insurance, no dry place to store their merchandise; it would rot.
Their troubles are no longer something seen through a journalist’s ‘objective’ eye, millennium development goals are suddenly my own concerns. Other parts of this country witnesses this annually, but they don’t have the solace of offers of food and shelter from friends, no ‘spirit of Assam’ or ‘Salaam Bihar’ to feel proud of as their crops, animals, and loved ones, are washed away. They are merely flood toll.
As a journalist, as soon as our house is dry, I plan to visit hospitals to count the leptospirosis patients. I hate that this reaction comes so naturally, that I am so accustomed to the failures of this city.
