Anticipating more rain, Chennai sweats on winter days

The social media might sometimes make the mundane seem monumental and molehills seem like mountains. But one would daresay it manages to add slices of humour to the darkest of times. This post must take the cake for lacing some of the dank weather of mid November with good humour as in – “Bay of Bengal seriously needs a psychiatrist, been in depression for some time now.”  It is credited to ‘anon’ in the highest tradition of honouring an unknown contributor.

As waves of low pressure troughs become depressions, etc. the Coromandel Coast took a battering we won’t forget in a hurry. Record rainfall in previous seasons didn’t seem like this, maybe because there was no social media then to add wicked slices of dark humour. There was some more of it in bright sunshine of last week too as on a sunny Wednesday a friend asked should she thank Lord Varuna or Ramana for the rare blessing that gave us clothes-drying intervals this northeast monsoon season. “Think Ramana ... he tells what’s coming. Varuna comes without telling!” is a cheeky response.

Something of a cult figure these days, the Met office chief has sort of grown into being the public face of the weather forecasters. Since forecasting, despite all the gadgetry, is a chancy affair, he may have seen both ends of the spectrum, from the heights of popularity as evidenced in memes making him a demigod to the depths when reduced to a figure of fun as and when the forecasting goes wrong. But when he went wrong last week on the rains continuing into Wednesday and Thursday (which never happened and the Sun God ruled) , there was a sigh of relief rather than more lampooning.

Just read these words carefully – “Hit by more than a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, widespread disruption was caused prompting the ordering of an inquiry. The deluge blocked several roads, making some impassable for commuters and causing huge congestion. Schools and malls closed, hotels were affected and the rain forced several shutdowns. Social media users reported leaks at the airport, which opened just last year after being constructed at a massive cost.” Could this be Chennai?

No, that report was from Qatar in Doha where the new airport cost a small matter of Rs 1,10,000 crore (about $17 bn). It does seem then that we are not alone in our miseries although if the Emir of Doha, Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, had to drive through the flood rush hour on that manic Monday in Chennai he would have blown his top and, maybe, ordered that the entire capital city be enclosed in a weather controlled dome. But that would have been when the oil prices were higher than they are now in these depressed times for those pumping up the fossil fuels from under the sand. Qatar was not isolated in its misery either, as nearby cousin city Riyadh in Saudi Arabia experienced the deluge too.

To see all the leaves of the Kathipara cloverleaf flyover jammed with vehicles at well past midnight on the day of that intense kind of rain in which the skies dumped some 10 cm of the wet stuff in a matter of three hours. Having spent several hours covering distances like one or two kilometers, some motorists had simply given up on reaching the top of the flyover and parked by the retaining wall and got out to stretch their legs and take selfies from the parapet of the snaking queues below on Mount Road. That signified most the helplessness of a gridlocked city.

Thanks to the gods who relented at the piteous sight of Chennai, there was no more of the monsoon madness. Not accustomed to being stuck in traffic jams – a privilege we leave to our Bengalurean friends – Chennai drivers tend to be on a short fuse. Thank heavens the professional drivers of Chennai can’t get jobs driving trucks in China for the traffic jams on those 10-lane superhighways can last for weeks together. We must thank the stars for small mercies in namma Chennai.

 

 

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