This is a bit of writing in the wake of the Chennai floods, a string of thoughts as and when they came to my head. The piece is written in two parts, the first after a day out in the city helping with distribution efforts and the second written today after we wrapped up relief operations.
--
My Chennai flood experience started a
little different. It was one of luxury, of prosperity, of excess. Two hours after
young boys battled each other to grab a packet of biscuits from my hands, I ate
hot food and drank hot chocolate milk at my college mess. Why me? Because I'm
lucky to have access to a campus that's in the spotlight, a campus that
convinced all the vendors to operate on credit, a campus where the mess workers
waded through waist deep water surrounding their own homes to cook for us
because, in their words, "naange illena ungalukku pasikkum." (If we
don’t come, you will all be hungry.)
But my Chennai flood experience
is also one of need, of desperation, of want. It's one of women as old as my
grandmother begging for food from my fast depleting bag, of young boys
discussing how many mouths a Rs 5 biscuit packet can feed, of the scores of eyes
laying sight on food for the first time in days. It's the experience of giving
and getting instructions to barricade our buses and close the windows to stop
people from climbing onto the bus as they try to grab food, of people flocking
the minute they see what looks like relief supplies.
My Chennai flood experience was
one of gratitude and oneness. Of volunteers coming together and spending hours
collecting, sorting, loading and distributing without stopping to ask for
names. Of the IITM team realising we don't have a master list of everyone who
worked to thank later on because no one waited to take pictures or fill a roll
call. Of locals who tell us "Inge oru vellai saapadu irukku-nge, neenge
aduthe edathukku ponge." (We have our next meal here, do go on to the next
place.) Of citizens sharing contact details on public forums if that means
access to more bread loaves or medicines. Of us thanking the stranded for
magically procuring coffee while they thank us for turning up. Of running out
of paracetamol in the middle of a medical camp only to have a stranger offer to
go shopping and return with a box full.
--
I’ve seen Bhanu Akka every
day for the last five years, as she sits patiently in the lobby of our hostel,
in charge of our security. Every day for the last week, she has told us stories
of her house and her neighbours, as they struggle to put their lives back
together after floods ravaged the city. She told us stories of another Akka
whose house was washed away but who was ”lucky” enough to save her ration card,
which she proceeded to dry on a dosai
kallu. She told us of people whose utensils were blackened by sludge, whose
choice lay between washing them thin or the unaffordable solution of replacing
them all. There were stories of snakes in the stagnant water of bedrooms,
people lying on the bed anyway for want of somewhere else to go. There were
tales of traffic jams caused on the only half of the road that was usable
because people began spilling onto the streets to escape from the cramped, unhygienic
environments of shelter halls. The auto driver who dropped me home late last
night thanked God for his first floor house, telling me how the people on the
ground floor were flooded and those on the second were dealing with leaking
roofs and walls. The beginning of every conversation in Chennai today has
become ‘how is your home?’
Behind every aching muscle in my
body today, there is a story. The stories from Anankaputhur and Vyasarpadi, Moggapair
and Iyyapanthangal, Velachery and Taramani. The stories of people in
neighbourhoods I barely knew existed till recently. The stories of the woman as
old as my Paati who begged me to give her a sari she could use. Or the Anna who
ran behind our bus as we pulled away after distribution. Or the Akka who bent
down close to thank me for distributing sanitary pads, saying only we
understood her struggles. Or even the woman who stood by me as I assisted in a
medical camp, warning me when the time came to stop. “People are coming back
for seconds, ma,” she told me. “Go give this to people who need it more.”
Never before have I seen this
kind of longing. More often than once, I have been shaken
by men and women much older than me thanking us for our work, their eyes
glowing at the sight of food and medicines. Even in the ruckus of our “control
room”/collection centre, as we joked of having stocks to last for years, there
was a tinge of unease in our voices, speaking volumes of the roads just outside
our gates. No matter how much we joked and collected and segregated, all this
would disappear in minutes outside, we knew.
This last week and all the hours
in it have taught all of us many things. It taught us the value of bread and
water, of dry roads and cloudless skies. It taught us to save every drop,
switch off every extra light, huddle in one room to optimize candle light. It
taught us that good faith and trust can still drive mass movements, a lesson
reinforced every time supplies traded hands with no questions asked. It taught
us that our city, known for orthodoxy and conservatism often spoken of in the
same breath as boredom, can rally together when the going gets tough and not
give up. It taught us that in times of need, hierarchies are forgotten memories as professors checked with student coordinators to volunteer in the efforts and children lugged many kilograms of rice to unload/reload. It taught us to share
information, resources and encouragement. It taught us to stick together and
come out stronger.
1 week. A dozen core members. Around
25 neighbourhoods. Hundreds of volunteers. Many thousands of kilograms of
supplies.
Doing our bit to reclaim home.
