The Billiken's Bluff

BOMBAY - Authorities said Wednesday they had recovered at least 200 bodies in western India after the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the country shut down the financial hub of Bombay, snapped communication lines and marooned thousands of people in the past two days.



Troops were deployed after sudden rains — measuring up to 37.1 inches in one day — stranded tens of thousands in Bombay.

Electricity and phone links were cut in the city, home to the Bollywood movie industry, schools were shut and commuters were stranded for a second day as trains and buses were cancelled.



“We have already evacuated around 10,000 people,” a government spokesman said.

Trading on Bombay’s bond and currency markets was abandoned.



India’s previous heaviest rainfall, recorded at Cherrapunji in the northeastern Meghalaya state — one of the rainiest places on Earth — was 33 inches on July 12, 1910.



The chaos highlighted Bombay’s desperately overloaded and inadequate infrastructure. Authorities have recently begun demolishing slums as part of a hugely ambitious $6 billion plan to turn the city into a new Shanghai.



"Most places in India don't receive this kind of rainfall in a year. This is the highest ever recorded in India's history," R.V. Sharma, director of the meteorological department in Bombay, told the AP. "We have to compare it with world records to find out if this was the highest in the world."