This week in August, a warning was issued for heavy rainfall in Mumbai and other regions. And as usual, despite the red alert, it was treated like any other day — offices open, no work-from-home, and the unspoken expectation that Mumbaikars will somehow manage.
For me, it was the first time truly experiencing something of this scale. It’s not that I wasn’t aware of Mumbai’s infamous monsoons — every year the headlines scream of floods, delays, and chaos. But the truth is, you never really believe something until you experience it yourself.
On August 18, 2025, it poured relentlessly. Trains were delayed, several parts of the city were waterlogged, and half of Mumbai came to a halt. Some were lucky to get a holiday or work from home, while the rest struggled through knee-deep water to somehow reach their offices.
That very morning, I stood at the gate of my building debating whether I should even attempt to step out. Against my better judgment, I decided to give it a shot. By luck, I found an auto to Andheri Station. The auto rode through submerged roads, half drowning in water, and yet somehow reached the station.
And here’s what surprised me the most — there was no panic. No chaos. People carried on as if this was just another monsoon day. While I stood there shocked at how the city seemed half underwater, everyone else looked unfazed, almost habitual to this ordeal. It was as if the city had quietly accepted that this is how life works here — waterlogging, delays, and yet, no stopping.
Somehow, by 11 a.m., I managed to reach Dadar Station and took a cab towards my office. But the visuals at Dadar were far more terrifying. The entire area was drowned — buses stood stranded, trucks looked powerless, and even the biggest vehicles couldn’t push through the waterlogged roads.
On a normal day, this stretch is nothing — a 15-minute Uber ride for about ₹100. That day, it turned into a 1 hour 20 minute ordeal costing ₹347. But it wasn’t the money or the delay that bothered me. It was the irony of the situation. Here I was, sitting in a cab half-submerged in water, feeling that if I opened the door the flood would rush inside — and yet, the expectation from the corporate world was simple and unchanged: “You must reach office.”
It struck me then — while half the city was drowning, the other half was still expected to sit in boardrooms, answer emails, and pretend that nothing outside those glass walls was falling apart. That’s the cruel poetry of Mumbai rains — they don’t just test the city, they test its people.
And for me, this day changed everything. I finally understood why outsiders fall in love with the “idea” of Mumbai rains — because they’ve never truly lived through them. To us, the rain isn’t romance, it’s resilience. It’s a reminder that this city never stops, even when it probably should. And maybe that’s both the beauty and the burden of living in Mumbai — we learn to move through the flood, not around it.
theparthway 
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