Life Across A Waterlogged Bridge, Mumbai Monsoons

When I left Ahmedabad (Amdavad) on 9th July in an overnight train for Mumbai, I did suspect that our train would be delayed. Because I had followed the heavy rain situation of the day via Twitter. So, I even told my Mom to have dinner properly as we would be late for breakfast. I was expecting 2-3 hours of delay in reaching Mumbai. What I didn’t expect was that the delay would be over 12 hours!

Our train was well in time when it reached Kelva station at around 5 AM on 10th July. This is only 30-40 mins from the final stop in Mumbai.

But at Kelva station, the train stopped.

For 12 hours!!

And then it was cancelled. :D

This is a photo series that I clicked while sitting in the stranded train. Right outside our window was a waterlogged bridge and there were a lot of people dynamics around it. Take a look,

Whoa just looked out of the window… See this! Just outside kelva station … Seems a road is waterlogged. #MumbaiRains pic.twitter.com/yGiMDQkrkb

— Priyanka Dalal (@priyankawriting) July 10, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

So that’s all folks!

This last photo is of the bridge taken from the platform. As you can see the water level had mostly reduced in a few hours though it was still raining. 

And if you are wondering what happened. The train was stranded as seen in the topmost picture – mid platform (half the train didn’t have a platform to it) – for 12+ hours. After which Railways finally made an announcement that it was officially cancelled. I suspect they could have made that announcement a lot earlier, but they were goofing around. They said that arrangement for buses from Kelve to Thane were being made. But the buses were still on their way. So it was quite a bit of a mess. While, railways seemed technically competent, they were fairly useless with regards people-servicing. And considering that two trains, about 2k people, were depending on them at Kelve station, their disaster response wasn’t up to mark. I tweeted a longer thread of my thoughts here.

Seeing the messy situation, my mother and I decided to head for the nearby Kelve beach. Kelve is well known for it’s beach. And so we spent the night at a beach resort. It was a lovely break. The next day trains were somewhat functional, and then we headed back.

This was my first experience with being stuck in #MumbaiRains waterlogged situation. I am glad to have been fit and fine to record everything.