An Ode to the spirit of Madras and what we can learn from the disaster

Chennai(erstwhile Madras) was recently hit by heavy rainfall and that had devastating impact on the life of the city. There were horrific stories around how dangerous parts of the city have become, where people literally traversed in boats to manage the rescue operations. That is a scary picture to even imagine. The way the city responded during is a heart warming story.

The city saw heroes emerge from every quarters of life. The city leveraged social media and crowd sourcing to different level all together. I have heard stories about how Mumbai welcomed everyone and anyone during the Mumbai floods of 2011. Stories of how houses were open to any stranger that night. I witnessed similar stories now. Chennai took that spirit one notch higher. It was also incredibly heart warming to see people participate in relief activities as soon as they saw their family/themselves reach safety zones.

Talking of heroes, it is an amazing story that a Radio Jockey, a movie actor, an auto rickshaw guy, a neighbour next door or any one with a cellphone & enough battery life turned out to be a superhero in cape. There were no inhibitions around if they knew the person next to them or not. Religious shrines supplied food even before relief activities kicked in.Houses with a bag of rice and enough gas cooked food for strangers all day. Coffee shops opened up free entry while they served coffee and loads of warmth. Movie theatres,malls were open to anyone who walked in. Every chennaite had an incredible story of humanity to share. I think we have witnessed the best of humanity when disaster struck the city.

A phrase that is often used by residents of the city is “Chennai is a city, Madras is an emotion”. I googled what the literal translation of Madras would be. It turned out — “ a strong cotton fabric with colourful stripes or checks.”

I don’t know if that was coincidence but if there ever was a word to describe the city and what we witnessed recently it had to be — Madras. It was Madras being Madras, a tight knit fabric of people with a long standing cultural pride that was incredible colourful. Chennai could be intimidating to a stranger on the outset. But it is like a coconut — a hard outer shell and a soft inner pulp and we just witnessed that once again.

It was also heart warming to see how the people of Bangalore responded to the crisis in the neighbouring metropolitan city. A city that is fiercely competitive with Chennai on every aspect kept aside it rivalry and lead the relief activities. Massive drives were planned out across the city — people contributed monetarily, food supplies, blankets,medicines and power banks to supply power. People pumping in tweets and responding to tweets/posts in solidarity and staying up in odds times to contribute in any small aspect — as small as getting the mobiles recharged was stirring.

It was also incredible how organisations threw out the safety manual and welcomed any stranger and at times lead the relief activity. The way Ola’s,zomato’s,payTM’s, IT companies, restaurant chains,cellular networks participated was heartening.

I hope the city comes out strong after this disaster, so far they have and they do have a history of standing up tall in times of disaster. Who could have forgotten the Tsunami, just a decade ago and the way Chennai came out standing tall afterwards.

There is a lesson or two for all the cities to learn from this disaster.

1. We need to really pump up our disaster recovery management system — Currently, the human capital seems to be doing bulk of the recovery system and looks like we are miles behind in planning out a coordinated relief system. I would have assumed that the government clearly would have known the exact location of disaster hit areas or some sort of technology to track as SOS request, but that doesn't seem to be the case. How do we bring innovation in this untapped sector?
2. How did we screw up our infrastructure so bad ? — Make no mistake, Chennai has one of the top infrastructural facilities in comparison with other cities but clearly the city’s infrastructure was not equipped to battle this crisis while 100 year British planned areas clearly withstood the disaster much better than what came in the last 15 years.
3. The lack of empathy from media channels and politicians— The argument of “distance” cannot be used with Chennai and it rather shameful to even employing it, and people wonder why the southern states feel alienated from the northern counterparts. Only after the disaster blew out of proportions on social media did the main stream media pitched in. Same goes for the politicians in the central government. It is also despicable that this moment was being used to gain political brownie points across political Spectrum — AIDMK followers pasting Jayalalitha’s pictures on relief materials, Subramanian Swamy insensitive tweets are just an example.

All said and done, thank you Madras for showing up your true spirit and a big salute for that. We are with you and wishing you a quick recovery.