Anatomy of a flood

On December 1, 2015, a record downpour of 490 mm — often described as “once in a 100-year” rainfall — inundated Chennai, killing hundreds and displacing thousands of its citizens. It also exposed how Indian cities are ill-prepared for such extreme weather events, which are likely to become more and more common as the climate change situation worsens. In Rivers Remember, Ms Ge — a writer, editor and citizen of Chennai — investigates what caused the calamity in her hometown and arrives at the conclusion that more than extreme weather it was administrative apathy that worsened the situation. This is not a fact of which we are unaware but are often reluctant to acknowledge.

In the Prologue of the book, “How On Earth Did This Happen to Us” (the title is acknowledged to be inspired by Haruki Murakami’s Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche), Ms Ge writes: “My conversations and investigations uncovered that the floods of 2015 in Chennai were a manmade disaster; that the Tamil Nadu government had played an undeniable role in drowning clueless citizens without any warning… it had also played an active role in sabotaging the city’s water bodies.” 

As she demonstrates through her research, the administration had over the decades mismanaged the uncontrolled expansion of the city, permitting construction on lakes and riverbeds, making people living there vulnerable to such a weather event. “If you live in urban India and find your home and your city sinking, it’s probably because of the mismanagement of water bodies,” she writes, “because rivers remember”. They remember their old homes and courses, even if people who have encroached upon them forget all about it. This forgetfulness and apathy on the part of the citizens expose them to the vagaries and fury of nature at times of such calamity.

The floods in Chennai were widely reported on in the national and international media, but Ms Ge abandons the critical distance expected from traditional journalism and plunges into a personal narrative — of her home, her family, and her city. In doing so, there a recognition of privilege and vulnerability: “There’s a creeping sense of discomfort in the air, which is new to those of us cushioned till now by the privileges of the salaried class.” On the day of the flood, her parents’ home — in which she and her brother grew up — is inundated. After the flood waters withdraw, when her family returns, they find their home washed away: “…it looks like a war was fought in there. A battle with the Adyar River… What no one tells you about floods… is that it is not water that comes into your home… what flows into your home when it floods is sewage… Mostly human waste….”
 

Her family is, of course, not the only one that’s affected. Ms Ge seems to have conducted an endless number of interviews and she painstakingly reproduces them in her book. This is a powerful narrative technique, pitchforking the reader into the calamity through its recollection. Why she chooses some narratives over others is not always clear. Some are obvious, such as that of engineer and volunteer Muhammed Yunus, who gets together a contingent of boatmen to rescue 800-odd people stuck in Urappakkam or of Dr Bala, a gynaecologist whose private hospital and pregnant patients were marooned in the flood. The inclusion of some others, such as that of Anantha Narayanan, a resident of Keezhkattalai, and his family, seem a little random. Having said that, it must be acknowledged that every narrative — of the lucky survivors and those not so lucky — is acutely poignant.

Another subject that the book explores is the role played by journalism in reporting the floods —and how it was prevented from doing its job. She writes in detail about how the overtly centralised government of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa prevented the free flow of information, not only about the floods, but also about the incumbent’s failing health. “Many newspapers were sent criminal notices for just speculating about Jayalalithaa’s health… over 200 such cases were filed by the AIADMK between 2011 and 2016.” The same lack of transparency plagued information about the floods. “I filed a query under the RTI Act to find out the exact number of casualties due to the Chennai floods… The reply (was)… 38 persons. …Thirty-eight is the official number… Not 512 as the newspapers had reported. Not 269 as the home minister had claimed.” In a note of despair, she writes: “I, unfortunately, failed… to find out just which of these numbers was real.”

Amartya Sen has asserted in his writings that famines cannot occur in countries with a free press. After reading Ms Ge book, we can also assert that floods cannot occur in a country with a free press — and the absence of one makes us vulnerable.

Rivers Remember:  #Chennai Rains and the Shocking Truth of a Manmade Flood 

Krupa Ge

Context (Westland); Rs 499; 218 pages