Staying Put

It's three hours later now (9PM). People who left at 4pm are still only 10km away. Also, the power is out in most the rest of the city. (The hotel has generators, but so does the client). It would be near impossible to get back to the hotel tonight. We are planning to wait it out here for most of the night, and we are getting updates often from people we know on the road and in the rest of the city. Doesn't look like we'll be working tomorrow. Fortunately the cafeteria downstairs still makes pizzas till 2200hrs, so about an hour ago we all went down for pizza and cokes. I had a Hawaiian pizza (without the ham - vegetarian client, remember). The Kiwi has two seasons of the Family Guy on his laptop - God bless him! We set it up in one of the conference rooms with a projector, so at least we have plenty of that to get us through the night for those of us who stay up. Some of us are actually working, and others are just playing around online. There are 9 of us left here on our team, and one driver. Some of the guys took the driver to go to the nearest store for beer, but we are skeptical if they'll even make it there, or back. [Update on them: their car broke down 1-2 km or so away from the bar they were heading to, so they walked the rest of the way, and are now drinking. I'm too tired to be jealous really, but happy for them that they now have a proper roof over their head for the night].

It is amazing how hard the rain has been coming down all day. The water simply can’t drain fast enough, in part because of the high tide as well. It’s much drier, cooler, and safer to be here at the client, as much as I’d prefer to be in the 5-star hotel. The only thing I bought on Sunday when I went shopping was an umbrella, but that’s back at the hotel. Poor planning on my part. Haha. Well, this will at least be an interesting experience to remember from my first week in Mumbai. As everyone keeps telling me, welcome to India.

From the Hindustan Times: "Heavy rains bring Mumbai to standstill" - Flights to Mumbai were cancelled and life thrown out of gear on Tuesday as incessant rains snapped transport and telecom links, with more rains predicted in the next 24 hours. The departure and arrival of flights at the Mumbai airport, one of the busiest in the country, was suspended as the water level increased around the runway area, said a local civic services official. The entire transport system in the city was worst hit with local train operations coming to a halt due to waterlogging on the railway tracks. Many office-goers were stranded in various railway stations for hours.
The local train is the lifeline of the financial and entertainment hub of India with over 15 million people. A Western Railway spokesperson said regular train operations had to be suspended on many routes due to water logging. Many public as well as private offices were closed early but a large number of office-goers were left stranded on the roads or at railway stations in the absence of any mode of transport.
"I left office at 3.30 pm and somehow reached the Churchgate station to catch a train. I was left stranded there for four hours as all the train operations were suspended," said Vijay Mankad, an executive with a private firm. "Finally, I had to go back to the office to spend the night there. Hundreds of people couldn't go to home has all transport links have been completely snapped."
The road traffic was also badly affected across the city as most routes were inundated with water. Uprooted trees at many places also worsened the situation for commuters. Long queues of automobiles were seen on all arterial routes. People waded through waist-high water in some places to reach their homes or places of work.
Mobile and landline telecom operations were also disturbed at many places in the city. The heavy rains, however, did not affect operations at the Bombay Stock Exchange and Reserve Bank of India - the country's central bank. The situation is likely to worsen in days ahead with the weather bureau forecasting heavy rains through Wednesday and early Thursday.

We also just heard that our best driver, Balu, is stuck somewhere about 15km away from here. His car has broken down, and we are worried about him. We were hoping he'd be able to make it back to the office after he dropped a woman off (a client colleague) who got stranded earlier. We had sent him out to help her around 4pm, and then asked him to come back for us. At this point, at least if he made it back we could have bought him dinner and let him stay here in the office with us. Understandably though, he just wanted to get home because he's worried about his family. He'll call us later with another update. Jeez. This weather is truly impossible. As cranky as I was at first at the idea of staying in the office all night (when I'm already here nearly 12 hours a day as it is), I'm very grateful to be safe and sound right now.