Waking Up to a Thunderstorm
Early the morning after arriving in New Delhi, I woke up to the sound of a thunderstorm. I remember thinking, “Hey, I’ve been to India several times, but I haven’t really experienced much rain,” as I headed to the restaurant for breakfast. It’s my usual hotel for business trips, so I know my way around. I was about to grab a plate and some food when I suddenly felt my feet slipping a lot. I looked down and saw the floor was completely flooded… I must have been half-asleep because I didn’t notice it at all and almost took a tumble. I asked a restaurant staff member what was going on, and they just curtly replied, “It’s raining.” Looking closer, I saw staff diligently sweeping water away. “What the heck? Does it get this bad just from a little rain?” I couldn’t help but smile wryly.
Utter Chaos…
When we all got into the shuttle car for the office, it was indeed raining a bit. However, it wasn’t particularly heavy, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary around the hotel. But then we hit a massive traffic jam leading to an underpass. While traffic jams are common, this one felt different. Several cars started driving against the traffic… (Well, cars do drive against traffic normally, but this time the number was completely different).
It seemed the underpass ahead was flooded, causing a continuous stream of cars to drive against traffic. But since Delhi usually has a lot of cars, vehicles were pushing in from behind as if it were normal… And as the picture shows, a bus couldn’t possibly make a U-turn in such a narrow space and was stuck. People were inexplicably out on the road, trying to guide or push the bus, shouting something – it was pure chaos.
And then, for some reason, after going against traffic, the driver kept driving in the opposite direction from where our office was (thinking back, he was making various phone calls while driving, so he might have consulted someone, understood the flooding situation, and then proceeded while avoiding it).
It’s somewhat common in India to see people walking past stalled cars in traffic, but on this day, it was beyond that. With the roads completely flooded, people were even walking along the median wall; it was just insane. That day, there was a tilted auto-rickshaw in the middle of the road, probably broken down from driving through the water, and fallen trees causing huge traffic jams – it was the epitome of chaos. It usually takes less than 30 minutes to get to the office, but we still hadn’t arrived after two hours. My colleagues based in India, who were worried, laughed and told me to “enjoy the Delhi traffic.”
It Was the Heaviest Rainfall in 88 Years
I finally made it to the office. After finishing my meetings, I chatted with the local team, and they told me that the monsoon season usually starts in July, so it’s uncommon to have this much rain in June. Apparently, this rainfall was the heaviest in 88 years for a 24-hour period (it seems to have fallen mostly overnight). They showed me videos of trucks and buses so submerged that only parts of their roofs were visible, indicating truly awful conditions in various places. Initially, we thought it might be due to inadequate drainage infrastructure causing widespread flooding, but it turned out to be more serious than that. In fact, it made the news, and there were reports in Japan too about a fatality from a collapsed airport roof.
Well, I guess I ended up visiting India at an absolutely wild time…
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