Quo Vadis?

If you were living in Chennai or Madras (if you prefer) when the city went under the massive rains in December 2015 you will understand this post. Waking up to heavy incessant rains overnight the roads were inundated, power had been suspended several hours earlier as safety precaution, mobile towers were down because the generators that kept them running after the power supply was terminated had run down. The absence of power ensured that the humble radio was the only source of information and mercifully the land line worked. We were relatively better off than those whose homes got washed away or some who lost their lives due to a combination of nature’s fury and human incompetence or greed. We were cut off from outside world for a few days but we were well, we managed with what we had and then we ran out of essentials.  When the rain eased off a little I went out in the flooded roads looking for any shop that may be open to stock up on essentials after a search I mana...

We have seen and have now got immune to collective apathy, you know that ignoring what happens around and going on with life has been happening everywhere for long. If you are from Chennai however December seems to be a month when collective apathy is kept aside and people come together for the good of the other. If you have been in the Chennai floods or cyclone Vardah you will know what the emotions behind this post are. This year Chennai added one more page to it's growing list of encomiums, the jallikattu protest. Much has been written about the protest and this post is not about the protest but the day when the protest ended. If you were in Chennai and in some parts of the city that felt the effects of the police action you would remember the paralysing traffic jams that threw the city out of gear. I was affected too, because my daughter was stuck in the van for over 3 hours without food. Though I was upset at the mismanagement of the events by the powers that be, I ob...

I was moving some things in my cupboard when I came upon some unused batteries still in their packaging and next to it this radio. For a moment I paused and in a flash the memories associated with both these things came back to mind from the deeper recesses of the brain. Some things cannot be forgotten and the Chennai floods will be one such. So much has been said and written about the floods and the destruction that it brought along but there is also another dimension to the floods that is overlooked. The floods brought people closer to one another and we have seen it all in the spirit of Chennai but the floods also brought people closer to themselves. It helped people discover themselves and thereby discover each other in ways that had not happened before. Our home was safe and relatively unscathed in the floods but we did have some of its effects; power shut down for over 3 days, lack of essentials and food items, complete shutdown of telecommunications and so much mo...