The Chennai Rain Story

Chennai:

It's raining! What a pleasant weather! It's tea-pakoda or at least idli-sambhar time! Perhaps this was the reaction of people of Chennai when they are unaware of the devastation that this rain is going to cause. But soon there was waterlogging everywhere in the city and water level in the river rose above the danger mark. The whole city is endangered with the risk of floods. The pleasant weather is no longer enjoyed by anyone. Everyone is just praying to the god to stop the rain. But the rain didn't stop and now water is overflowing with water bodies towards the city. A Man shouted in the Tamil language which means "bhaago paani aa raha hai". It created a situation of panic among the people. People inside their homes could hear the loud splash of water and other people's voices. They came out of their house to check what's going on and found the water is coming towards their house or has already entered. People above the ground floor looks confused whether to go up or down. As per situation, some preferred to abandon their homes and move to a safe place by treading water while others went to the roof of their houses. In the course of moving through water, many of them drifted away by the water currents. People are becoming desperate as rain continued and consequently water level rising day by day. Stress, hunger and anxiety can be noticed on everyone's face who are stranded. The kids are crying making the situation worse. This is also giving rise to irrational but relevant thoughts like “This flood is the consequence of human sins”, “God is being very unfair to us”, etc. The NDRF team begins the rescue operations. After some moment the entire city is overlapped with water. The transportation is completely blocked as the railway tracks and runways are under water. The boat is functional on the roads instead of cars, bikes or buses.

Image : Indian Express

The situation is going out of state's hands and thus the central government intervene and deploys Army, Airforce and Navy personnel in the rescue operation. With the aid of the heroes of India, hundreds of people are being rescued. Now people can see a "ray of hope" whenever they find a chopper flying above them or see a brave man in an army uniform is coming to save them. Well, the job of our armed forces is not rescuing people during natural disasters but they are doing this because they are capable of doing that and also find this as their moral duty to save lives of people who are dying. They did it during Kedarnath tragedy, Kashmir floods, Nepal earthquake, and now in Chennai rains. So we can say that our Army is the real "sankat mochan".

I also find there is a need to answer the irrational thought "This flood is the consequence of human sins". What are the human sins? Why did this unseasonal and unprecedented rain occur that led to floods? Well, I can't define the sins. But to answer why this kind of floods came in Chennai, we have to look it through a scientific glass. We are developing ourselves at an increasingly high rate. That's good, isn't it? Because of the development, the agricultural or spongy lands are being lost every day. The water absorbing capacity of the soil is decreasing and that is why we see even a small amount of rain causes waterlogging which did not use to happen if we go back 10 years. We are also preferring water repellent roads, buildings, etc. If there were no gravity we would have stop water in the mid-air! Obviously, we cannot stop our developmental programs but what we need is a scientific research in finding the eco-friendly way of developing our society. This is a great opportunity for scientists and entrepreneurs!