flooding thoughts…..

The heavy downpour coupled with floods may have brought down Chennai to it's knees but the calamity has brought out the humanity and its latent aspirations locked beneath the jungles of concrete.

I heard experiences that families in the upper floors of apartments shared their space and provisions with the families from the flooded lower floors.  There was severe space crunch. The provisions were dwindling and were used in ration. However,  I came to know the comment that such days were in fact bustling with activity and enjoyable as they were with more human company ……  a break from the dull routine cellular family nests. …..

I have read in an article of a nostalgic childhood memoirs that that author  recollected the joint family members and the bustling human presence in his childhood house…. even unrelated, distant neighbours of his street used to stay in his house nay….home for quite some time ….. and lamented to compare his present loneliness …..

In spite of having only something there was peace and fullness in life…….

One Admn official of Central Research lab shared his childhood memoirs in his village, Sakkimangalam near Madurai that milk or milk products were never sold or bought but only shared in his village. Excess milk of a household would be placed in the 'Thinnai' /portico and any one could collect to the need.

As we get civilized and educated we migrated to Chennai where every hue of the so called development possibilities ……nay …. means to survival and  make quick money is available…

However...., in spite of every thing(s) there appears to be emptiness …

The reason being lesser human company – fear of holding fast to the hard accumulated ‘wealth’ – ‘necessity’ of ‘junk luxuries’ – and the result is -archipelagos of unit family islands…….

Are there any surviving joint families in Tamil lands?

A survey may perhaps find few countable!

Sociologists suggest that a close nit village is the ideal social unit for the human living …

Heavy rains and drought are historically recurrent in Tamil lands……

Our ancestors were keen observers of nature and built irrigation systems and networked them with natural water courses in line with the meteorological and topographic features… no PWD…nay… the successive dispensations of post Kamaraj era created them….

Such systems were maintained and preserved through the centuries of past until the colonial occupation.

Almost all the huge irrigation reservoirs in the plains and their intricate networks and their connected farm lands in the Pandya country are centuries old as few are referred even in the Sangam literature – dating further back... !

We neglected them…. Belittled them….. encroached them……vandalized them…..and called it development…..

Is it not that the children can commit mistakes ….still they are children……but whoever first to embrace back is the grownup....?!

The rains showed us the presence of the great systems created by the genius of our ancestors…..

Economist Shumacher, in his acclaimed work, Small is Beautiful, condemns the scant regard the development concepts give to the ‘ubiquitous’ / ‘freely available’ factors like water and air….

The Nehruvian thrust to the capital intensive ‘modern temples’ threw aside the Gandhian emphasize on reworking and reinforcing the already existing, self sustaining village system….

May we now care to recognize the splendor of Kosasthalai River, Coovam River, Adyar River and scores of other wonderful networks which still sustain the very Chennai - the colonial remnant which is actually bent on destroying their very existence?

Heavy floods in the Southern Districts did not cause Chennai like devastation. The flood waters drained through the existing Tamiraparani and other river systems networked elaborately with so many chains of reservoirs upto the 'kadai-madai' - the last storing system in the link near the sea shore. Further, the ancient residential townships and villages were  placed on 'Natham lands' i.e. lands with higher altitude than the surrounding landscape. The low lying areas of the plains were cultivated by the ancient settlers. There are a number of ancient villages with the adjective 'Natham' in southern Tamilnadu.

Madurai head of the Chamber of Commerce has pointed out pooling of everything in Chennai and depriving the Southern districts as the root cause of loss of properties to exorbitant scales.  There has been massive and steady migration towards the urban centers dotting the main trunk road from Nagercoil to Chennai from the hinterlands. May the Tamil land be 'de-Chennaised'.

1943 Chennai flood report in the Hindu says that citizens formed groups and provided relief to the flood affected and to the homeless as the colonial Govt was controlled by the war time priorities and could not do much….

Whether situations have turned after 72 years…………?

I interacted with an energetic and youthful relief team, ‘vaa nanbaa’ from Madurai and assisted them to procure few relief materials.

I spoke to a dedicated rescue volunteer who used a motor boat with his team for a week in Northern Chennai –a settler from Nellai with his team he rescued scores of stranded people. I interacted with a relief activist, Sakthikumar, in Trichy who has formed a Kadalur help group and coordinated the relief providers and seekers. The small group of a reporter and few others were instrumental in channelizing 4 crores of relief materials to the needy.  Sakthikumar followed a novel idea of sourcing information on the ground situation from the nook and corner of the District by ringing up to the post offices…. Govt can brain storm the innovative ways of using the strong India post network which connects even the remotest villages for channelizing relief or even development works….   

The Kadalur District administration accounts Rs.40 Crores as food expenses and Rs. 60 Crores for other relief measures to the flood victims of Kadalur!

I guess with 40 crores, perhaps half the population of the vast Kadalur district could have been fed for at least 4 days…..!

Is there any such magnitude of relief reported?

May the RTI activists/ press investigations verify the facts……….

Bharathi said to have extensively reported on 1916 cyclone which ravaged Pondicherry in his Sudhesamitran columns…….

Storms, rains, destruction and sufferings churned out few immortal poems from Bharathi. His experiences as a reporter and his observations perhaps resulted in beautiful poems, particularly under the caption, ‘காற்று’. 

For further on Chennai...... my previous blog, '@Chennai but not a travelogue'....... 

Few photos of the floods which say it all on the floods …

Hats off to the heroic police officer Sylendra Babu. He was busy on rescue missions with his team......




1943 - Chennai flood as captured by 'The Hindu'....

Floods and droughts may come and go in Tamil lands.....

Tamil country is never ever short of heroes against the waves of adversities.........