Thursday 31 December 2015

The deluge

  On the 2nd of December 2015,  I woke up rather early to the screaming alarms of cars parked in our colony. I noticed that power had gone off. It was very dark at 330 AM and I couldn't figure out what happened. I peered into the darkness outside my window. I noticed that the streetlights had gone off and knee deep water had entered everywhere. I went down the stairs from my second floor home. I could see families being evacuated from the ground floor apartments. Residents in the first floor and above were opening their homes to perfect strangers and families. Children, pets, old and infirm moved into all houses.
           What followed was a mixed bag. Firstly the floods didn't spare the rich in their tony homes in upscale neighbourhoods. Secondly every citizen rose up to be a volunteer,  working to mitigate the sufferings of fellow citizens. Thirdly, the entire relief operation was being coordinated by social media like twitter and facebook. (Yours truly was also relying on it in spite of belonging to the Government, Central, although). A disaster so vast in scope ought to have been coordinated by the State Govt. authorities. One would expect the Mayor of Chennai to come before media and give inputs on where relief is needed in terms of food, drinking water, medicines, clothes, blankets etc. Instead social media kept bouncing off these messages through day and night.
     We were cooped up without electricity or water for 2 days. Phones had stopped working, food supply was running low.At last we made an exit and moved into the house of my sister who lives in a relatively unaffected area. Neighbors with whom I shared barely a nodding acquaintance had turned solicitous and friendly in those days. I lost a car to the floods.  On a working day, I and the Missus are ferried to and back from Office in Govt issued cars. Nevertheless, a small personal car was handy to drop Chathu at the Bus stop, take a drive to my sister's house or just to drive around in an emergency. And now, the bridge near my home is broken, which makes it a longer drive to get to the Bus stop.
            Life is limping back to normal. Rebuilding what's lost, picking up the pieces and moving on...But a disaster opens your eyes to the frailty of human existence. There was a time during the solitary confinement that I started wondering if this is the end. Was it all going to end in water ? There are families which have lost their homes, their belongings, documents everything. A ground floor resident in my apartment block, an old widower, I see him stand everyday before the ruins that was his home.  He had lost almost everything.
    In the aftermath of the floods, there have been recriminations and mudslinging galore amongst politicians, bureaucrats, media and others. There have been reports of how lakes have been usurped by real estate mafia and further regularized by politicians. How waterways have been encroached by the homeless, who could not be evicted since they constitute vote banks. How trees have been cut to accommodate concrete monstrosities. How sewage lines have been left in a mess. All in all, it is not a pretty picture. The ordinary citizen is hoping that this disaster will open our eyes to tighten public management. But the cynics know that this too shall pass..... And things will be as before.