Category: Rains

A Time of Need and a Time for Greed

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‘The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.’ – Mahatma Gandhi

‘Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.’ – Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

As the rains receded on December 3rd, I and my brother in law ventured out to buy essential household items. It was around 11.30 AM and we had to go from one shop to another as there was stock out situation for some of the essential items. I had walk the entire Kottur area in search of Milk and Candles. Not a single candle was available in any of the stores. A solitary vendor was selling milk outside a big vegetable store in Kottur market. But instead of the usual Rs. 40 per liter he was charging Rs. 100 per liter, a full 150% mark-up to the usual price. Most people were buying multiple packets of milk from him and yet after walking a few feet from the shop complained that it was wrong on the part of the vendor to hike the price in that hour of distress.

After an extended period of incessant rains, the prices of some of the vegetables had reached the stratosphere. On this particular day these darlings of every household’s kitchen were not even available at even these extremely inflated prices. Bread and Rice were running out of stock too. A couple of days later as I was standing in line to buy milk at another milk depot, a woman was hoarding about hundreds of packets of milk in her tricycle. When one of the customers asked why the woman was siphoning off milk meant to be distributed through regular channel, she hurled abuses at the customer. The irony was that within a few minutes she was selling the same milk packets in a nearby street with a fat markup.

Though most of us complain about the greediness of opportunistic vendors, we are opportunistic and greedy too. A case in point was a trip a petrol pump on the same day. My brother in law’s two wheeler was almost at the verge of running out of petrol. By this time most petrol pumps were closing down as they had no more petrol or diesel to sell. The unending lines of people outside petrol pumps rivaled the queues outside places of worship on auspicious days. I went along with my nephew to one of the petrol pumps near Royapettah. Among the crowd to my disappointment and chagrin, there were a bunch of guys who had come with multiple 30 to 40 liter cans. Why would anybody need so much petrol or diesel? Clearly they were greedy arbitrageur who was planning to sell the fuel at much higher prices in suburban localities. Even people who were buying for their own use too were buying more than necessary.

Around the same time, another irrational phenomenon was unfolding across the city. There was a run on the banks, no actually there was a run on ATMs. With most of the bank branches in Chennai on leave due to rains, the cash balance in ATMs was already low. The situation was made even worse by a lot of anxious people (foreseeing more rain and bank holiday) each withdrawing up to their daily permissible limit. The anxious withdrawal pattern resulted in most ATMs going out of cash by afternoon that day and as result the entire city was indulging a real life treasure-hunt, running from one ATM to another. Only after bank branches opened the following day and some of the banks started operating mobile ATMs the situation limped back to normalcy.

While it is understandable that there were long queues at grocery stores, milk vending booths, ATMs and petrol pumps to everyone’s surprise there was queue in wine shops too. And contrary to ATMs and petrol pumps that ran out of stock, these wine shops were fully stocked and was buzzing with so much activity and life that one could have easily mistaken them for an ant colony or a beehive. It is billion dollar puzzle that how in a democratic country there is stock out for essential commodities but wine shops are fully stocked.

No amount of technology can serve as replacement for irrationality of human beings. No amount of rules and processes can check human greed. As I think back on the events that unfolded during the recent rainy spell, I get reminded of a dialogue from a recent movie: ‘By eating even a single mouthful of food after our hunger has been quenched, we are ensuring that another person remains hungry.’ This principle is very apt in situations of natural or man-made calamities like the recent rainy spell.

The Essentials in Life

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What would I consider as luxury? What would I celebrate? What would I classify as a moment of great joy? What would call as a divine blessing? Today, my answers to these questions are completely different from the ones that I had in my mind until a few days ago.

A twenty four hour period of continuous and very heavy rains between December 1 and 2, created an urban deluge that started submerging one locality after another in Chennai. All my family had were just the essentials, the bare minimum to carry on with our day to day activities. And yet, this bare minimum seemed at that moment and even now like ultimate luxuries for which I am very grateful to God.

I do not remember previous instance when there was no power in my house for two days at a stretch. Yet I was grateful that the rain water had collected only in my street and did not enter my apartment complex. The excess water let out from one of Chennai’s reservoirs was causing havoc at localities barely a couple of kilometers from my house. Army and NDRF were using boats and every other possible means to evacuate people from these areas. Though there was no power in my street and the mosquitoes were troubling us, we were safe and had the luxury of a good night’s sleep.

There was no power, no TV, no internet and slowly the mobile battery too ran out. The waterlogging in my street made it nearly impossible to go outside. As a result I spent most of the two days playing and interacting with my daughter. In those two days I should have played and interacted with my daughter more than I would have done in an average fortnight. And my interaction level with my wife, parents and neighbors increased significantly during those two days.

In that time of despair, a bunch of kids in my apartment complex found reason to play and rejoice. When the rain stopped on the third morning and the common area in my apartment complex was dry enough, I and my daughter walked from one gate to another. I also saw my neighbors either interacting with or playing with their kids.

In a city where the weather is hot and humid for most of the year, I wouldn’t have ever dreamed of a day when I would rejoice at the sight of the sun. And yet when the rains stopped and the sun appeared only for a brief period, I expressed my joy by shouting like a child. Thankfully from that moment, though the sun has been playing hide and seek the rains have stopped.

By the third evening, with the power still not back, we left to my eldest sister’s house in another locality. It was still raining at the time of dinner and we were all sick and tired of seeing more than a month of rain breaking one record after another as well exposing the limits of our city’s infrastructure. Though the environment was pale and gloomy, my daughter on seeing her aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousin having dinner with her described, ‘I am very happy. We are all having dinner together.’ I guess she was absolutely right. What mattered was that we were all together and we were safe. Everything else that we counted as the necessities of modern life seemed superficial and redundant. I thank God for providing me this moment/ opportunity to reflect on what is important in life. I hope and pray that the people whose life had been thrown out of gear and traumatized by this monstrous downpour find the courage and help needed to reconstruct their life.

Rains in Chennai

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I do not remember the last time when I saw so many helicopters fly. The incessant rains in December first week left my hometown Chennai as battered like a war-torn city. Unable to cope with unfolding disaster, the state government asked for center’s help which soon dispatched the army, navy, air force, the coast guards to join the NDRF which was already assisting the state government with rescue and relief operations.

Someone photographing the earth from several kilometers high in the sky would have been baffled at the sudden appearance of numerous islands in India’s South East. The railway tracks in the city, the major roads leading to and from the city, the roads linking different localities within the city were all under water. With the airport runway too submerged the geographic isolation of the city was complete. This is probably the first time in several years that train service from the three major railway stations in the city were stopped completely. And for the first time in several years that the airport operation in Chennai came to a grinding halt. And so many people in and around Chennai became aware of the names of all the rivers, canals and lakes in and around the city for the first time in their lives.

The photos that were being relayed across the globe of the devastation would have made everyone question, ‘Is this India’s fourth largest metropolitan city?’, ‘Is this the city whose name used to synonymous with South India until a few years ago?’, ‘Is this the same city that was so strategic to the British in India that it became the only Indian city that was bombed by the Germans in World War I?’ Every locality in the city was affected by the rains. Electricity and Telecommunication were completely cut-off. Instead of resembling a major metropolis, Chennai resembled a series of islands in distress and people were just castaway in their own homes.

The rainfall received in the month of November is the highest in nearly a hundred years. The rainfall received on December 1, is the second highest rainfall in day in the past one hundred years. In addition to Chennai, four other northern districts (Kancheepuram, Thiruvallur, Cuddalore and Villupuram) and the Union Territory of Pondicherry had to bear the brunt of the cloud’s fury. The endless streams of clouds resembled the unstoppable army of Anubis from ‘The Mummy II’: These streams of cloud unleased hell on Tamil Nadu’s northern districts and crippled normal life.

Nature became a neutralizing agent that made the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the well-connected and the not-so well-connected all equal in that moment of misery. While we cannot do much about the vagaries of nature, one should not forget the fact much of Chennai’s present problem is actually man-made. The steady disappearance of lakes and ground level tanks, the encroachment of canals and rivers, reckless urbanization, greed of the residents for cheaper real estate, toothless civil administration that that did not stand firm in instances where it should have been are all the pieces in the not-so difficult to understand puzzle that shamefully managed to convert the fourth largest city in India into a ‘DISASTER ZONE.’