On the morning of Janmashtami in August 2000, Hyderabad woke up not to celebration but to a deluge. The warning had come, like a ghost from history — the city had heard the same words on September 28, 1908, when a cyclone had turned its streets into rivers. This time, too, the rain didn’t fall; it roared as if the sky had been torn open.
“It wasn’t rain; it looked like it was pouring water,” remembers Sonu Singh, now 43, a resident of Suryanagar, Chikkadpally. At 18 then, he waded through ankle-deep water with his family of five to a half-constructed Housing Board building as the flood gushed in from RTC Crossroads, Liberty, YMCA and the Hussainsagar channel. The family watched helplessly as water swallowed their one-floor, tin-roofed home.
