The rains are here finally and the city is awash with the beauty of natural greens, wet roads, flowing bodies of water, fresh fruit and vegetables, relieved faces peering out of windows and grills with their arms extended to feel the rain drops on their palms and soaking in the fresh smell of wet mud … Nu and I plan to go for a walk and have pakodas and hot chai this evening… I usually try to look at everything positively but somehow or the other when I see the first rains of any year my thoughts go back to the floods of that horrible date of 26 July 2005, and the horror haunts me for a while again. What a nightmare that day was … Nature equaled us all despite all of our created partitions of religion, caste, creed, wealth, beauty, position in society etc… Yeah we were all submerged in the same cesspool of garbage and human excreta… and my family was separated from me; Raunaq somewhere between home and school, Roshni at home by herself and Nu on the roads somewhere in town inching his way through an endless snarl of traffic and water.
When we all re-grouped next morning it felt like we were reborn again.
And despite the suffering we all went through as a family, the moments of humanity that were displayed by all the people, invariably bring back a smile and a tear to my eyes even to date - the city had come together in that moment of mutual helplessness, shock and grief. People helped passers-by with food, shelter, guidance; holding tight when someone stumbled through the snarling streams of water; pushing floating cars and its stranded occupants to a safer spot; speaking words of kindness.
That day humanity won the fight against nature.
After returning from a fun walk in the rain and indulging myself in pakoras and chai I reminisced, at how despite so much destruction and emotional loss the city had come together as one human force that fateful day. And AMCHI MUMBAIKAR JANTA had resurrected the very next day with some levels of awareness and humility, until the mad rush and speed of the city enveloped them again hounding them into a never ending race to become; forgetting that all they actually need to do is just BE authentic, BE in the flow and BE in a balance with the elements of life
I do wish the force of humanity would arrive and become aware of the wisdom to unite and be a single people ... truly resurrect by keeping their self-created at bay and loving all humankind purely ... because we live just once, so why not leave behind the sea of hatred and divide and evil.
Some day we will cure our world...
