Flood relief hero

After the gruesome Paris attacks, one hashtag restored faith in humanity, #PorteOuverte, which had Parisians opening their homes to provide shelter. Closer home, during another calamity — the Chennai floods, BITS-Pilani Hyderabad student, Gokul Nath Sridhar from Chennai, posted a status saying his doors too were open for people in crisis.

Gokul, founder of start-up Tenreads, says he was inspired by #PorteOuverte. “I thought that was a brilliant idea; people coming together to do something small but which had a great impact. At first, we thought we would let a friend stay, but we decided to let anyone in.”

Within hours the status got over 160 shares, and was all over Chennai. And that’s also how Ranjith Kumar, who lives in Palavakkam, Chennai, found a home for a night.

“The houses near his home were flooded and while they were pumping out the water, his house got flooded. So he reached out to me. Within a few hours, he showed up and it turned out be a night of bonding over calamity,” says Gokul. Ranjith cooked aloo masala for his hosts and was surprised by how someone could open up his home to a stranger. But Gokul says that he surprised himself. “We don’t find an AirBnB kind of a culture here. We had to make a few adjustments as we already had two other friends at our place. So we were six-seven people in a 2BHK,” says Gokul. He adds that this was when he realised the power of social media. Not only did people share his status but also a few other friends of his started putting up similar statuses.

Surendranath Reddy, founder of REDD Robotics, who also has an office in Hyderabad, too put up a status which again went viral.

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