Despite a two-hour downpour on Monday evening, Amdavadis were seen thronging garba venues in the city.
A sudden downpour on Monday evening was no dampener to the festive spirit of Amdavadis, who, clad in full traditional gear, thronged garba venues across the city to dance the night away.
Only the state-government-organised Vibrant Navratri 2013 was cancelled due to safety reasons.
An official of Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Ltd (TCGL), which is organising the state government’s garba event at GMDC grounds, said the venue was cleared of rainwater but the evening’s event still stood cancelled due to safety concerns.
The private organisers decided to ahead with the evening’s plan, gambling the money that has been pumped into arranging the events. “The garba organisers have sponsors and had already sold the tickets. The venues are booked for all nights till Dussehra, and of course, we cannot even postpone them,” said a garba organiser, on condition of anonymity.
Interestingly, only the south and new west zones of the city received rain on Monday. Certain areas of the zones received close to 11mm of rainfall in the two hours. Maninagar and Behrampura in the south zone received 11mm of rainfall while Vatva was a close second at 10mm. In the new west zone, Vejalpur and Bodakdev recorded the highest rainfall of 13mm and 10.5mm respectively.
The city, on an average, received 1.78mm of rainfall between 2pm and 4pm in the afternoon while it recorded 0.98mm between 6pm and 8pm in the evening.
The sudden downpour in the two zones led to waterlogging. Heavy traffic jams were reported from Maninagar, Vatva, Prahladnagar and Bodakdev.
But there were a few who cancelled their garba plans for the evening. “I had planned to go for garba today (Monday) but the rain has ruined everything,” said Viral Dave, a resident of Satellite area of Ahmedabad.
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