Rain, rain and yet more rain

At first, we were delighted. After an unusually hot summer, and erratic monsoons for over a decade, Aurovilians were relieved to see the clouds once again deliver the seasonal promise of the North-East monsoon. One celebrated the raucous bellows of bull-frogs that hopped out of their holes from where they are aestivating and croaked out to their mates to join them for well, mating. One watched out when traveling for snakes that had slithered out of their holes for these were now flooded, and there was a feast of frogs to be had!

But as the hours of heavy rain turned into days, and the days turned into weeks, the mood of Aurovilians noticeably dampened. Events were cancelled, turn-outs for meetings and for classes were poor, and work in offices slowed down as the telephone and internet lines became dysfunctional. Cyclists and motorcyclists cursed the taxis that multiplied on the roads. And the roads, already rutted into pot-holes or rendered slippery mud-traps by the rain, in some places became impassable. Even old-timers and hard-core greenbelters who had learnt to cope with the harsh extremities of our hot and wet tropical weather could only manage thin, wan smiles as we all converged at our community grocery store to stock up on supplies.

We lived for days without seeing the sun. We worked daily trying to stem the mold from spreading into our clothes, bed-sheets, furniture, and yes, creeping in between our constantly damp toes. One of the catchment ponds in Forecomers behind my house filled up and gushed down into the canyon as a steady waterfall that subsequently meandered as a mud-river. The sound of the water was constant. It no longer seemed like the beneficent life-giving rain that we needed to recharge our aquifers. It seemed like a deluge that threatened to engulf life, and seemed all the more apocalyptic, happening as it did during the Climate Change Convention, COP-21, in Paris. In the month of November, there were only three days when it did not rain at all in Auroville. And 150 kms north, Chennai recorded the second-wettest November and beat the record for maximum rainfall in 24 hours in the past 100 years.

As sodden November slid into a damp December, my family started calling and texting me to check how we were doing, for by then national newspapers were splashing headlines about the disastrous floods in our state, Tamil Nadu. At first, I was not aware of it. I had not even seen the papers for a while. The biggest regional daily, The Hindu, published in Chennai had anyway closed its office for a day as it was flooded. But as the news leaked through, one was confronted by the unfolding disaster in Chennai. At first, we thought that it was only the low-lying areas of Chennai (a city that in the past decades has been increasingly built on reclaimed marshy wetlands) that were flooded. We heard reports of people being marooned in their homes and offices, unable to cross the roads, which had turned into rivers. In Auroville, we cheered each other up, when depressed by the damp grayness, by saying, “at least, we are not in Chennai.” And we were all the more grateful for our check-dams, catchment ponds, and the dense vegetation with their network of roots burrowing deep into the ground, creating channels for the rainwater to percolate. Soil and water erosion from our plateau, as far as I could judge, were held in check. Thanks to the work of pioneering greenbelters, the Auroville plateau absorbed the excessive rain, with almost zero run-off into the sea. In Chennai, it seemed to be the exact opposite. There, human beings instead of finding their balance with nature, had pitted themselves against nature.

Consider these facts: Just a few decades ago, in the eighties, Chennai had 600 water bodies. But a master plan published in 2008 counted only 27 lakes that were in a healthy condition. According to official records by the state’s Water Resources Department, the storage capacity of 19 big lakes had reduced from a total of 1,130 hectares (ha) to 645 ha in a span of few years. In my visits to Chennai over the years, I had noticed how the wetlands of Chennai were increasingly being built on: I saw migratory birds escaping from the harsh winters of Europe struggle to find healthy habitats, failing which, they settled down on concrete poles jutting over the marshes of half-constructed buildings. The problem, as Sunita Narain, the Director of the Centre for Science and Environment, a premier research institute points out, lies in the fact that “wetlands are rarely recorded under municipal land laws . . . Planners see only land, not water and greedy builders take over.” And land admittedly is in short supply in India’s ever-expanding cities with its burgeoning population. A national newspaper warns, “Chennai today, your city tomorrow” and lists all the Indian metropolises where shoddy planning and indifference to the natural environment mark them out as potential sites for disasters in extreme weather conditions.

And mind you, as we were constantly reminded by the Paris climate talks, the weather is bound to get more extreme. Climate change science predicts more precipitation in intense bursts in tropical countries, and a national meteorological institute confirms this prediction. Worldwide, it seems that as a species, we no longer know how to live in harmony with nature. We seem, even in Auroville, to have forgotten that we were meant to co-evolve with nature . . . The modern human being’s disrupted relationship to nature – where nature instead of being respected as a teacher is pitted as an adversary – is clearly revealed by the media tag “Chennai Fights Back” that was used for reporting on relief operations in the metropolis.

The papers were full of horrendous stories of human suffering and occasionally uplifting accounts of courage and sacrifice by those who went beyond their duty to help others in need. Accounts of flooding of other coastal areas closer to Auroville – Nadukuppam, Pondicherry, the Cuddalore district – where people had been beggared with no homes, food or drinking water, also filtered in. But Chennai continued to grab the headlines, for undoubtedly it was the worst national disaster of the year with an estimated loss of US $3 billion. And yes, one did feel a sense of helplessness when subject to the planetary might of nature, which in one fell stroke could cripple the lives of human beings and crumble their artifacts.

But, in the 2nd week of Dec as the rains lessened, the flood waters subsided, the Chennai airport (which by the way got flooded for a runway was literally built over the Adyar river) cautiously opened part-time operations, and life limped back to some semblance of normalcy, devastating news of human errors that partially caused the flooding leaked out. One reason why Chennai got inundated was because of the delayed and unannounced release of water from a key reservoir, the Chembarambakkam reservoir. Instead of letting water out in a timely fashion with adequate warning for evacuation measures, the sluice gates were opened only after the reservoir had overflowed at midnight on Dec 1. According to a public interest case filed in the Chennai High Court, this single human error allegedly resulted in the loss of 280 lives. Editorials in prominent newspapers argued that the prevalent socio-political culture does not empower individuals to take independent decisions, even in the face of emergencies like this one.

As I absorbed the news yesterday, I could not sleep, wracked by emotions. In the spell of one monsoon, my mood shifted from joy to helplessness to despair to anger. Now, even though the sun is out and the skies once again resound with the ubiquitous melody of birds, I cannot quite drive away that anger in my heart. But anger does not heal, it does not bring back that which has been lost . . . and in the meantime, there is work to be done. There are survivors of this disastrous flood, who could do with a helping hand.