This is a copy of letter I wrote to shweta just after a 26/7
There are lot of things to share with you. Every thing occurred to me in last 10 days. When I departed from Lucknow by train I had few things troubling into my mind. ‘Am I doing right by leaving you behind for wait wait and wait?’ I questioned my decision of joining Spjimr ‘n’ number of times the whole night(25th).Could not find any positive answer. Before getting into sleep I decided to discuss the same with you next morning.
The mornings always come late to me. I woke up around 8.30. And first thing I tried was to listen your voice. The only medium available was my mobile phone with no network and for instance no battery (You know). What other option I had? I adhered to my wrongly planed decision and studied for a while for foundation test which was going to be held on 27th. I had fair deal of study, sleep..study, sleep and study and sleep. I do not know how much I studied and how much I slept. The study was comfortable. It was comfortable perhaps because of the fact that I was doing that for you. And It was comfortable till 5.30 pm when I met Madhur.
Madhur was traveling in same coach and was also going to Join Spjimr’s one year program for which I was there. He identified me by the study material I was reading through out the day. He Introduced himself and another fellow Arvind who was also traveling for the same. Madhur told me that train is going for indefinite hault at Igatpuri station (which is around 125 km before Mumbai) because of heavy flood in Mumbai.It shocked me. And suddenly an uncertainty with some fear appeared in my mind about reaching the institute in time. When train stoped at Igatpuri we tried to find out some information at station about the route. But no Information was available.
The train was at hault there for around 2 hrs when it started to move. But it moved only 20 Kms and stoped at ‘Khari’ for permanent hault.The name of the station was ‘Khari’ was only a coincidence. “AUR TRAIN ‘KHARI’ PAR KHARI HI RAH GAYI”. We spend whole night in small parts of minutes and hours. Waiting for green signal. We could not do anything because of night, heavy luggage and indifferent station. We got another fellow traveler’s accompany named Ankit who was also moving to Andheri to join some institute.
Next day morning we confirmed that the train is not going to move any further in next 4 to 5 hours at stationmaster’s office. The first thing I did was ‘a call to home’. Next we decided at took one hired jeep to move by road to Mumbai.But the city was in different mood to welcome us. We held up at place called Bhiwandi which was around 50 kms away from our destination. It was only 50 km but we are not certain about how and when are we going to reach our destinations. We put up in a resort cum Water Park there. Which was a bit costly but we did not have any other option.
We waited for another day and next morning things were reported normal by most of the TV channels. We moved to ‘Kalyan’ to Madhur’s uncle. There we had lunch. I have already told you about the horrible rumor of “ Bandha toot gaya”. By the evening we were in our temporary Hostels.
SANTOSH SRIVASTAVA 
Remember that BharatJAZZyam evening! (ur convocation day); everyone was remembering the same day of that date(26 july).Like you every citizen in mumbai has its own experiences of that most haunted day in the history of this city. personally, i’ve heard several stories from different people.
Mumbai life is fast (though stucked in Traffic); where no one has time to bother about something else,But, experiences of 26 july makes people empathically attached.
in past two years mumbai has suffered through natural and man-made calamities, but life here is unbreakable which heals with distinctly visible marks.
RajeevSrivastava