Trapped for hours, sharing biscuits: how Gurgaon’s floods hit school buses this week

Children on multiple school bus routes in Gurgaon were trapped for four to five hours this week as buses crawled through Mor Chowk, Jharsa, Narsinghpur and Subhash Chowk, sharing biscuits and half-eaten parathas while waiting out flooded roads. Some children grew so hungry and dehydrated by the time they got home that parents reported headaches and fatigue setting in.

A school bus also got stuck in a dug-up stretch in Rajendra Park, one of several incidents that unfolded as the city logged 115mm of rain over 33 hours — enough to overwhelm a drainage system authorities say they have been upgrading for years. A cyclist fell into an open sewer pit in Feroze Gandhi Colony, and a cow slipped into another, as waterlogging spread across Sectors 31, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 56, 57, Sheetla Mata Mandir Road, Sohna Road, Basai Road, Kadipur and the Delhi-Jaipur Highway service lane near Narsinghpur.

Part of the danger came from the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram’s decision to open drain covers across the city ahead of the monsoon without visible barricading or warning markers, turning footpaths and roadsides into hidden hazards alongside half-finished drain contracts left abandoned mid-project on sidewalks.

The city’s underlying geography compounds the risk each year: Gurgaon sits in a natural bowl ringed by the Aravalis, with a 90-metre drop between its highest and lowest points that sends monsoon water rushing straight into the low-lying sectors where these incidents occurred.