The Day It All Started

A city of 4.3 million people, Chennai faced the wettest November in a century this year. And December 1 probably broke all records with 490 mm rainfall, highest in 100 years resulting in bringing this city to a standstill.

Roads flooded, industries shut down, people trapped in their homes, workers at their workplaces, Chennai turned into a chaotic city unfolding devastation and ultimately turning into a submerged island!

Main Causes Behind the Floods

Just like any other person would think, the main cause behind the floods is assumed to be the ever changing climatic conditions. Little would they know about the contribution of the greedy town planners and dumb engineers who transformed the urban development of the city into a main cause behind this ’human-made’ disaster. It is so called because the unprecedented rains in Chennai aren’t out of the blue. It is actually quite usual for the politicians to put the blame on the weather phenomenon to hide their ‘vested’ interests.

Paralyzed Chennai

With over 400 people dead and more than 1.8 million people displaced, Chennai is now more of a crippled city. Not just loss of lives but a huge destruction of property is making it difficult for the survivors to move back to a normal life. After all, there is no place left to call a home.

Basic food and fuel supplies and travel were greatly affected by the floods. Schools, colleges as well as industries have come to a halt. Only when the armed forces reached the city, the victims received some help.

Ignorant Media

While the people of Chennai craved for all the little help they could’ve received to survive, the Media, so called ‘fourth pillar of Democracy’, instead of showing the plight of the victims and helping them, were too busy telecasting the lame comments made by the actors about ‘Intolerant India’. In fact, the ‘superstars’ themselves were too busy to show a bit of concern for the flood victims. What more? This tragedy got all the attention it actually needed a bit too late when the death toll began to hike!

A ‘Political Issue’

Now that the politicians are finally turning up to help what is left of Chennai, they are leaving no stone unturned to publicize their ‘act’ of help and turning this tragedy into another political agenda.

While the politicians compete with the opposition and other political parties in the name of ‘Who helped more?’, our most reputed Amma did not forget to add her picture on every item her party supplied. Is this what we call help? Humanity?

Author’s Perspective

I remember the lines of Shakespeare, in a different way, when I see the current scenario of Chennai.

‘Where the mind is FULL of fears,

And the head CANNOT be held high!’

It is shocking to see that the Paris Attack, where the numbers of deceased were half to those dead in Chennai Floods, got more attention than this tragedy. Now why just the politicians would be blamed when even the common man of our nation was just too busy changing his profile picture on social media to show support for Paris?

Not to forget, this tragedy also put forward a clear picture of how prepared we are when it comes to tackle even these basic climatic conditions, which are prone in most of the areas in our country.

[Image Attribute: Marnanel]