Chennai’s Same Old Story!

By Sanjay Pinto

Every ten years, Chennai  witnesses severe floods. In November 1985, I remember cutting my birthday cake in a neighbour’s home. As we lived in a low lying area in a place ironically called  Little Mount, along the banks of the Adyar river, the incessant downpour had submerged many areas, and was threatening to reach our doorsteps. So after placing a few valuables like the TV & music system on the loft, we left our home, carrying all that we could – my books, money, jewellery, certificates. Strangely enough, there was an encore in 1995. And yet again  in 2005, when on the 26^th October, the city received 21 cms of rain in just 2 hours, for the first time in over a hundred years! So going by this ‘every decade’ formula, Cyclone Nilam that the Met office says may bring 25 cms of rain, in 12 hours, doesn’t scare me. The next big monsoon onslaught is still 3 years away!

I’m watching Monsoon 2012, that has brought in its wake, Cyclone Nilam, under very different circumstances . I’m not a TV journalist anymore, with the onerous task of tracking the storm. I now have the luxury of watching it unfold from my window with a steaming hot cup of tea and samosas! I now stay in an apartment building with no threat of evacuation. And my children are yet to enter school.

That apart, it’s the same old story in Chennai, year after year.  Will the gusty winds of 100 kilometres per hour uproot trees that form a  canopy around my building and damage our vehicles?  Will fallen trees block traffic and cause snarls tomorrow as we drive to work?  Will the roads get water logged making commuting a nightmare? Will the many trenches as a result of the incomplete storm water drain construction in the city get inundated and double up as breeding grounds for mosquitoes? The 37 dengue related deaths and hundreds of reported cases are scary enough. Will there be an outbreak of the host of illnesses that the monsoon brings? I often wonder why we have to go through this every monsoon. These are not flash floods. We know what to expect at this time of the year. Why did we dig up trenches if we knew that we wouldn’t be able to cover them before the rain?

It’s easy to point fingers at the authorities. Many incidentally, like the Chennai Corporation Commissioner D.Karthikeyan (who is experiencing the third monsoon during his tenure in the hot seat) are staying overnight in the office to oversee relief work. What about the common man who throws plastic covers on the road, clogging the drains? The dishonest contractors who use sub standard material to lay roads? A facebook wall post is quite apt: “In the West, the water disappears 5 minutes after a downpour. In India, the road does!” The indifferent residents who allow water to stagnate in empty tyres, coconut shells and uncovered overhead tanks?

Talking of the authorities, I  texted our Director General Of Police K.Ramanujam to ask just how prepared we are for the storm. His immediate response seemed heartening: “ The State Disaster Response Force under the ADGP Operations is kept in readiness.” As an NDTV journalist, I had covered the tsunami in 2004. Eight years on, I can say with all the emphasis I possess, that Tamilnadu has met the challenge posed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the lawns of the Raj Bhavan in Chennai during his visit to the State in the aftermath of the killer waves: ‘Convert Disaster Into Opportunity’. The administration today does have a contingency plan in place and some of the best officials to implement it, like Dr.J. Radhakrishnan, who was the Collector of the worst hit Nagapattinam district and now the Health Secretary.

I’m sure there is no need to panic. As I type this, the power is off. How I wish the Tamilnadu Govt had given free inverters along with mixers and grinders! The power failure now is probably a precautionary measure to prevent electrocution deaths. The State’s monsoon death toll stands at 34, many due to electric shock. But with several other districts experiencing power cuts for upto 12 hours a day, a night or two in darkness may not seem too unbearable.

I just hope that by the time my twin babies start going to school, we have a monsoon vacation instead of the summer vacation. We can withstand the heat. The Britishers couldn’t and hence his colonial hangover. A monsoon vacation will make sense, obviate the annual tension over whether schools are closed or not; and the harrowing experience of tiny tots wading through waist deep water in crisp uniforms. Meanwhile, my neighbour has just called to check if schools will be closed tomorrow as well. The guessing game continues! 

(An edited version of this blog of mine was uploaded on www.ndtv.com)