While many residents chose to huddle indoors fearing heavy rain over the weekend, social media platforms, mobile apps and news updates on television kept people glued to screens of their electronic devices.
Weather bloggers, who were providing information on Facebook and Twitter, faced a barrage of requests and questions about weather conditions and rainfall. Chennaiyil Oru Mazhaikaalam, an independent weather blog which also has an Android app, kept its thousand odd users updated on the situation with daily updates about the weather and the areas which received and were likely to receive mild rainfall.
News channels, which were still running special programmes on the floods which had wrecked havoc in the city found a new audience in children, who tuned in to listen to weather updates. “With schools having reopened only a couple of days ago, the news of there being a probability of rain spread and our children kept checking scrolls on the TV channels and weather updates,” said R. Prashant, of Mandaveli.
It seems that Tamil calendar apps have also become popular over the years, with people relying on them to check for festivals and indicate auspicious times.
When Mohana Lakshman plans anything big, she always makes it a point to ask her grandmother whether it is a good day, or if she should take something up at a certain time. Now, with a number of apps available to check the Tamil calendar, she has switched over to consulting them instead.
“Although I am not extremely religious, this is something that I have done as a habit. I try not to go out at Rahu Kalam if it is something important and I try to make sure important things happen on good days. Just to make sure, I cross check with a couple of apps that I have on my phone,” she explains. According to Narayana Babu, founder of Om Tamil Calender app, most people consult these auspicious calendars for many things, but since they are paper based, they often have to wait till they get home to check. “So far, there are around four lakh downloads, and around 20,000 people use the app on a daily basis,” he said.
A majority of people use these Tamil calendar apps to check festivals, but others also check auspicious dates and times, he added.
