2015 Chennai Flood
Who don't remember the flood in Chennai in 2015 straying both rich and poor to the streets without any difference, where people from everywhere chiefly youngsters helped in getting back to our normal life? Observed how people in Maduravoyal Taluk in Thiruvallur district handled this tough situation and survived, with their experiences.
In single day - Dec 1
I was working in my office and excited to see such rain slashing out Chennai. Adding to my excitement, there was a mail alerting us to leave office as soon as possible, respect to our wish. Just called my mom to know the status and left office at the earliest. Drenched fully, not to surprise, left me amazed after reaching home. Find the picture below which I captured and I have never seen such a water flowing through my streets, into Erikarai lake which you can see at the end. And to our miracle, within a couple of hour, water entered into our house, making respective arrangements in the meantime.
All most every house in the street are affected and while analysing the problem, tardy release of excess of water from Chembarambakkam lake, which flooded the entire city and led to the loss of many lives and property worth several crores and no drainage systems were implement in our area before, made us suffer. Water entered homes, over several floors, and washed out people and their possessions.
No Mobile networks, no internet, no food and no flood reliefs, yet we had fun. Selfies were going around all the nearby streets, capturing the whole area with my iPhone 6 and roaming everywhere in water which is touching our thighs.
Boat time
Now it’s time for us to roam in Boat. We got help from Palaverkaadu Fisherman’s where they got us a boat to relocate people who got stuck in their houses, especially Women’s and Children’s to safer place. Now it’s time for us to create a boat, yes you read it right, we do make boats with Thermocol whenever we get water logged in our area. We usually roam around, get some big Thermocol sheets from industrial waste and make a boat which holds upto 6-8 persons. Final boat is below. Below are my friends, moving along with boat to get some fun. Not a clear pic as well.
It almost took 4-5hrs to make this boat and we couldn’t go for a ride on the same day. Next day, to everyone’s excitement, we headed in Erikarai lake. Erikarai lake is one the biggest lake in Maduravoyal Taluk, supporting 1 Lakh people overall. Find a aforementioned video, casting Erikarai lake along with my friends and myself enjoying the ride in the middle of the lake..
Relief measures
We felt so much difficulties in getting proper food at that time. Taking grant of the situation, shop keepers fixed huge prices for Milk, Biscuits etc costing half litre of Milk for Rs.50. Only after 3 days, we started getting reliefs. Students and Youngsters from Bangalore, Andra Pradesh, Kerala and from many places started visiting our place and distributing stuffs what they can. Some gave us food items where others gave us clothes. We (12-15 boys in my area), started helping them by distributing things equally and for desired peoples. We get their foods, moved to other area where none of the reliefs came so far, distributed over there. To our surprise, Stunt Silva, stunt master in Cinema industry came forward to help us. Below is the moment we cherished with him.
Celebrities. Whenever a celebrity visit a place, It distracts people in that area from their worries and give them a smile, exclusively in difficult situations. He was such a kind person, giving us positive energy to recover and took all our concerns. Days went and after a week, we got our mobile networks back with the internet and we thought it’s time to circulate those pics with our friends to share our experiences.
Help others
People could face the toughest challenge, the nature has given after so many years with helping each others. I could see the strong bonding in interstate relationships even though we fight for some other reasons. That unity is the strength I would say and we have set an example for the separatist’s who are playing with people in the name of caste and religions. Concluding this wonderful post with the famous tamil quote in Aathichoodi saying,
இயல்வது கரவேல் (Help others as much as you can)
specially for the required one, whenever required.
