For two months, money was the only preoccupation for Irudhayaraj. After a long search, the 56-year-old washerman had finally found a suitable and teetotaller groom for his only daughter Mary. The family took large loans and was all set for the wedding on December 5. That’s when calamity struck.
On the morning of December 2, I was woken up before sunrise by a friend. In a tense tone, she told me that an aunt in Ekkaduthangal had sent an SOS. She was witnessing a sight not seen for generations. The torrential rains that had started the night before, the worst in hundred years, were continuing to batter Chennai. The Adyar river was in ferocious flow, and a part of the arterial Saidapet bridge was submerging.
The dhobi colony Irudhayaraj lived in was flooded with at least ten feet of water. Along with his belongings, he saw a precious part of his life washed away. Holding a gilded necklace in one hand and a porcelain cup in the other, gifts to the groom’s family, he wept as he sat drenched on the pavement. “How will the wedding take place now?” he asked, holding tight his daughter’s hand.
For lakhs of people, last week the city violated a sacred trust they had collectively reposed in it. Their concrete jungle, they thought, was unassailable. But it had let them down. Before heading to Saidapet, I went to Kotturpuram from where rumours of terrible adversity were filtering through.
An area where the lower- and upper-middle class mingle, albeit with strict territorial distinctions, the cries of help of families stranded on the terraces of the Tamil Nadu Housing Board colony filled the air. Hundreds of policemen blocked access to Kotturpuram Bridge; the water touched the second floor.
Guna was having an epileptic fit. As the mentally challenged youngster shivered under layers of clothing, he and his mother were probably the first persons in the city to be rescued. When the boat arrived, instead of jumping in to save their own lives, the people guided it to the far block where Guna lived.
To me, this was the first sign of the empathy that helped the city cope with a crisis of this magnitude. Religious distinctions were buried. Muslims cleaned temples. Hindus took refuge in mosques. Chennai, for a few days, turned into the pluralist Utopia that the men and women who wrote the Constitution dreamt of.
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On December 4, I went to North Chennai, which the media and administration had overlooked the previous day. Angry residents blocked the entry points to what are the poorest parts of the city, home to Dalits, labourers and fisherfolk. Squatting on the road, Selvi was livid at the administration’s total apathy in reaching out to them. “Is Chennai only Poes Garden and Gopalapuram,” she screamed at a policeman. She was referring to the two localities where Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and DMK president M. Karunanidhi live.
It took nearly two hours to cross the barely three kilometre stretch to reach Vyasarpadi. On the way, it was evident that North Chennai was the worst affected, with no sign of dry land anywhere.
As I walked down the Vyasarpadi bridge, now broken in places by the downpour, I was confronted with a sight that reminded me of pictures of the Mullivaikal war zone in Sri Lanka in 2009. I knew the comparison was flawed. In fact, comparing calamities is futile, as it undermines both the past and the present. But it is through images that the mind connects the dots.
For miles on end, a sea of humanity was wading through waist-deep water. Residents had decided to flee North Chennai since no rescue party had reached them. Everyone carried what they thought was their most precious belonging. Murugesan, a fisherman, was balancing on his head a 32” television. “I got this three months ago. This is the first TV I bought after the free one the government gave stopped working,” he said. Behind him were his wife and children, carrying small bags of clothes and textbooks.
Sathyamurthy Nagar. Two days ago, Ganesan’s 89-year-old uncle had passed away. There had been no power supply since the rains began. There was no way to run a freezer to keep the body from decomposing. On the morning of December 4, as the stench became unbearable, the family decided to brave the flood waters to cremate the old man. It was a nightmare, all crematoriums were flooded, and the family waited for hours in knee-deep water with the body on a pushcart covered with what flowers they could find.
Mariammal was frantically searching for any vehicle that could get her father-in-law to a hospital. “My husband is not in town. If something happens to his father, he will react violently,” she said. After hours, they found a rickshaw. Two young men offered to push it over the steep Vyasarpadi bridge.
Kodungiyur’s residents usually battle toxic smoke rising from the garbage burning in the landfill. Now, the rains posed a new challenge; the flood waters pushed garbage right into their homes. “I think this is our fate... to be in the middle of stench. This is how the poor suffer,” said Stanley Devasivatham.
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December 5. I was with an Army column that was handling rescue operations in Velachery, a bustling residential area that embodies the growing prosperity of Chennai. The locality is an apt example of the havoc misplaced development wrecks. Much of it is built on a lake and when the skies opened up, nature reclaimed what rightfully belonged to her.
We reached the area at 8 at night, thanks to coordination delays by an ill-prepared local administration. When Maj. Rakesh Khatkar asked for searchlights after the batteries in the ones his team was carrying died, the official said he could get them in the morning. “Why would I need a searchlight in the morning?” the officer asked. “You are right; you won’t need it,” came the reply.
We tested my phone torch to see if its throw was powerful enough. “More than enough. Let’s start,” the officer said. As the boat reached a sharp corner, an old man on a second flood balcony was puzzled that the Army had come to rescue residents. A jawan explained that it was best for him to leave now rather than risk the rising waters. “No, I am comfortable here,” he replied. “But will you come back on a second trip? Could you bring me some tea leaves? We have run out.” The entire column burst out laughing.
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On December 7, I went to Cuddalore. Twitter and Facebook were indignant that the “national English media” was not giving space to Chennai floods, but Chennai’s media was no different in the way it ignored some rain-battered districts of Tamil Nadu. Cuddalore, a predominantly rural southern district, received more rainfall than Chennai, with a spell that lasted close to a month.
At Visur village in Panruti, the nightmare of the floods still evokes shivers among residents. “On the afternoon of November 10, the canal breached. Water gushed into our village with phenomenal force. Before we could react, a mother and daughter drowned. Three men climbed palm tress and held on to it for dear life,” said Vijayarajan.
At Onnankuppam in Kurinjipadi, it was hard to distinguish between Datchana lake and the paddy fields. Thousands of acres of paddy were under water and people were being ferried on boats on a stretch that had been lush green only a month ago. The entire landscape looked as if it had been strafed, with houses bulldozed by the might of the waters. The farmers had lost both crops and homes. For the second time in two months. With no MNREGA work, the population was totally dependent on relief from the government and NGOs.
But while Chennai proudly displayed the unity that helped it survive after the deluge, things were different in Cuddalore. Deep caste divisions between Dalits and other castes came in the way of relief work.
I saw upper-caste families insisting that relief trucks serve their settlements first before Dalit habitations. I followed one vehicle that was carrying hundreds of cartons of drinking water, a precious resource. The upper caste men unloaded most of the truck, leaving hardly five cartons for the Dalit settlement.
The unsuspecting Army men too were misguided. As the column came into the village to hold a medical camp, upper caste men rerouted it to the centre of the village where no Dalit dares enter.
The fear fuelled by the Dharmapuri riots of 2012 ensured that they would keep to their side, even in the worst disaster.
