The city is under water. Citizens have buckled down under the fury of nature. Aid is flowing in from all quarters, but clearly, it is falling short against the onslaught of rains. Visuals of the sunken city have gone viral. There is an outpour of help from complete strangers and the willingness to share resources that is usually seen at the time of natural crises. Nature’s fury often brings out the best in people.
The positive, productive use of social media is commendable. From making maps of areas to avoid, or access, opening up homes to strangers, pick-up and drop, exchanging alerts and answering queries, netizens have beautifully bridged technology and humanity in an hour of need. The government is doing its best. Individuals and aid organizations are taking the lead where the system is still not being able to reach. Security forces are working with civilians and fighting nature with the same zeal and industriousness that they fight to protect our borders.
The Chennai floods remind me of the one time I was stranded in a deluge in 2007. Beginning my homeward journey on an evening of incessant rains, I reached home four days too late after being stranded in the train for 24 hours, in a bus for 36 hours, overnight in the house of kind strangers. In this time of deluge, I got a fair glimpse of how complete strangers become comrades.
The overnight train was stranded on a station for 12 extra hours. The waiting rooms were full, long queue to charge phones at the plug points. By afternoon, there were talks that all trains on the route, including hours, would be evacuated. By evening, I left the train and took an auto to the nearest city to catch a night bus.
The bus was to reach me home in five hours. But, the next morning, it halted two hours away from my destination because a point on the highway was overcome with flashfloods. One bus driver who had attempted to pass that patch was pulled out by onlookers and his bus dragged a good distance away. After this, no bus driver would risk going beyond that point. We stayed in the bus that night.
The stuffiness of the bus, the steady downpour and the unpredictable delay had made all passengers irate, uneasy and close to being sick. None of us wanted to spend more time in the bus. Soon, the passengers formed small groups and started wading towards the nearest city. Two jolly women “ sisters who sold vegetables, a man in his twenties who painted walls and fixed tiles, and a small-time building contractor “ were my only company and guardians as we left the bus and waded in knee-deep water to reach the city.
We were five strangers joined in a moment of accidental brotherhood. We must have snailed on for three kilometers when we got a lift in the tractors that farmers were plying to ferry stranded passengers. Many of these farmers also carried looms of ripe bananas from their farms that they offered free to people wading through the highway.
There were examples of meanness too. Tea without milk, soft drinks and biscuits “ which were about the only things available after a long walk on the highway - were being sold at atrocious rates. The cell battery was worn off and a man flatly refused my request to allow a call. But, on the whole, the collective generosity of were brought together by the flash floods far outweighed the cases of opportunism and selfishness.
On reaching the city, I was able to make contact with my family. A distant relative of a distant relative showed up to take me home. He also welcomed my four companions to his house in the old city area, an elusive network of lanes and by-lanes that hid huge mansions behind them. Vinayakbhai Patel and his wife lived up to the warm and simple hospitality that is the hallmark of their community. We were served tea and hot snacks. My companions parted ways in spite of sincere insistence from the Patels to stay the night. The two men stayed at a rest room on the railway station while the women found refuge in the house of a relative.
I got a call from my four companions that Diwali but I never met again. Memories of some strangers, whose names you have forgotten and whose faces have faded away, are permanently etched with utmost gratitude. The Chennai floods have definitely brought in uncertainty, loss, fear and destruction with them. It will probably take months for the city to get back to normalcy. But, I am sure the natural fury in Chennai will revive the faith of many a people in humanity by the kind acts of complete strangers who will show up, help and disappear without waiting for a word of thanks.
