Through all the failures and learning curves of
life, we gain more and more memories, it's these memories which keeps a particular situations or instants awoken in our mind.
Some of those memories are very pleasant and sweet,
some are not so pleasant and some turn out to be our nightmares. But each and
every memory regardless of its essence, teaches us something about life. It
gives us valuable experiences.
One such point in my otherwise unusual life came
when I, along with 4.334 million other Chennaites experienced something that we
haven’t witnessed for ages- A devastating weather system which brought in 1024
mm of rain in the month of November alone (which is 300% more than usual
rainfall the city gets during that month) and believe it or not this was just
the starting of what was to be a disaster. As if this much rainfall is not
enough, the city went down to register more than 400 mm of rainfall in just 24
hours one the first 2 days of December. As per record this was the highest
amount of rainfall the city had seen in 100 years and consequently, it led to the
flooding of Chennai – what was to be the worst to ever hit the city in past 100
years.
Now from these stats, it should come as no surprise
that the beautiful city finally converted into some sort of water body and it
got immensely flooded.
It had several devastating implications- almost the
entire population of Chennai was effected – Transportation stranded, Food and
water supply cut down, people getting homeless, and a lot more.
The entire city was in the gasp of the bloody anger
of nature and without a question of a doubt – the city was down to its knees
with people and humanity in Chennai, in general seeming completely helpless.
The city was out of track, and in the moments like
this, you except some help and concern
from the Government and from the people all over nation but leave the people
even the media persons, who find love in putting every damn thing to spotlight,
were too lazy to properly broadcast this situation.
At the times when there should be some sort of
tendency to help the affected, the entire nation was in a hurry to blame the
town planners and architects of the city for poor planning and media itself was
determined to put this disaster forward as a man-made one and not a natural
one.
These sorts of stuffs were freaking us, the effected
consensus of the city.
Finally the army came to the rescue and the entire
chennaites thank them from all our hearts for standing by the stranded people
in the most disastrous times.
And apart from army one such standout in the relief
efforts, one glimmer of humanity through the tragedy was the concerted efforts
of Chennai’s own, the film star
Siddhartha Suryavanshi and the man behind the radio---RJ Balaji.
At the time no-one showed any signs of effort or
help to revive the destroyed city, Actor Siddhartha was on the roads with chest
high water, helping people and doing everything he can to rescue the stranded
ones to safe places. He along with the help of RJ Balaji (another person active in relief work) and some volunteers toiled hard for about 5-6
days in order to rehabitate the city, he introduced the #ChennaiMicro to use
twitter to his help and in this way, he brought together hundreds of thousands
of people to contribute their bit to the help of the people and without a
question of a doubt he defied the so
called stardom policies to become the real star of the show.
Here’s a testament of his incredible, and heroic
efforts:
Without a question of a doubt, his efforts were an
inspiration for millions of people as to how a movie star valued humanity above
all in order to help the people of his city. And that’s why every single
Chennaite salutes and thanks this guy whole-heartedly
Following his lead, several other stars and popular
figures rushed in to provide help to the city’s affected population.
Even if we stress in our sharp memories we can never
find an instance when any bollywood star helped the people in Mumbai 2005
floods the way Siddhartha did this time around. This simply shows the class of
the man.
What was another high to take out from this disaster
was the unified fight that the people of Chennai had shown.
From December 1-7, the entire week during which the
floods got triggered, Chennaites were constantly taking to twitter to help the
people of their city survive the danger, a testament of this can be seen from
the fact that #ChennaiFloods and #ChennaiRains and later #ChennaiMicro were
constantly trending for more than a week.
Many people living in safe places gave their home
address and contact numbers publicly in twitter and other social media to help
the dislocated people.
Several others volunteered with The Indian army and
people like Siddhartha in trying to bring the life in city on track.
The Government triggered the relief measures by
distributing a number of food and water packages to the people but what really
got criticism was the fact that it allegedly delayed the distribution of relief
packages in order to print the photographs of the Chief Minister over those
packages.
This I guess, pretty much clarifies the situation
and the mindset of all the people whom the affected consensus dearly look after
to with hope and expectations of help and relief.
Now, the tragedy is done, people are back to their
feet and city back on track and is looking raring as ever but at this point of
time, thinking about that situation really makes us feel how contrasting things
could be.
On the night stroke of 13 and 14 November when Paris
was hit by those massive terror attacks, the entire world media provided solid
coverage and there was also a small thing in social media which was changing
the profile picture in facebook into the national colors of France which I
believe was a good think and a great sign of solidarity. But that's not what exactly happened in our case.
Contrastingly enough, as far as Chennai's situation is concerned, even the media was also not
much focused about properly highlighting the situation and it was only after
much widespread criticisms and appeals that the issue got highlighted, during
the tragedy, the people were left stranded and fighting for themselves all
alone.
This was really a very disturbing instance of
contrast when a tragedy in a nation was not properly viewed in by its own
officials and mass media.
But at the end of the day, if we think about the
scenario it do has given us some sort of useful experience on how to fight a
dangerous situation like this. And talking from general point of view, it has
made all the 4.334 million people affected in Chennai very strong and tough
mentally.
And the way common people of Chennai responded to
this disaster in a very unified manner truly made me believe they are the best
and it’s increased the respect for the common people of Chennai infinitely high
in my mind.
I truly love to say this that I am proud to be a
resident of this incredible place and I am proud to be a Chennaite.
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