GURGAON: When a student of Class II returned home on Monday, she was traumatised and stressed. Kiara, who had left school in Sector 47 at 12.30pm, reached home in Sector 51 at 8.30pm.There were many more like her, who spent anywhere between 3-6 hours in school buses before they could finally reach home as a monsoon downpour flooded roads and left buses stranded on Monday afternoon, leaving hundreds of parents bitter and seething about the city’s civic infrastructure.Parents could do little beyond calling the school, tracking buses and exchanging updates on messaging groups. A series of messages exchanged among parents captured the anxiety as school transport got stuck at severely waterlogged stretches, particularly around Subhash Chowk. “Have the kids reached home?” an anxious parent asked in a group. The replies offered little reassurance. As rain battered the city, their hearts pounded. The helplessness deepened as the hours passed. “Kyra’s bus is stuck at Subhash Chowk. It has been more than two hours,” an anxious parent said as updates continued to come in. Those who tried to drive towards the stranded buses found their cars could make little progress.At Subhash Chowk, parents were seen wading to the buses to get their children out and carry them back on their laps. “Some parents waded through 3.5 feet of water for several hundred metres to escort children trapped inside school buses to safety and then waited for their guardians to turn up,” said a parent whose daughter was among those in the stranded buses.A parent’s response summed up the mood: “It is horrifying to the core.” “We pay taxes and our kids are getting stuck in buses for hours. I mean, what is too much to expect from the govt?” the parent asked. For many families, the anger was directed at what they described as the recurring failure of the city’s infrastructure during rain. “We were worried because we can’t go to pick them up. What if they need to use the toilet, feel hungry or something else happens? We were completely helpless,” said a parent.Aarav and Aarush were among children stuck near Subhash Chowk. Their bus had been stationary since 12.30pm, with waterlogging and broken-down buses further adding to the gridlock. They eventually reached home, stressed and hungry, around 5pm. Another parent described the situation as a “horrible state of affairs”. “Don’t know why govt is not taking sufficient measures. It has become an everyday affair in the rains. Two hours of rain and the entire city is heavily flooded,” the parent said.
