Chennai floods: This group of volunteers fed thousands by churning out 40,000 food packets a day

Chennai’s Volunteers

They came in droves to volunteer. They knocked on doors to collect newspaper for packing! They vowed to not clog up drains with plastic or rubber bands and learnt the art of packing in dried leaves and newspaper. They set up assembly line processes and quality control. They made new friends, formed teams and stayed on their feet. They picked up brooms to sweep away water with every new bout of rain. They picked up trash and washed huge vessels. They took delivery of groceries and kept tabs on gas cylinders. They formed teams to do real-time surveys of the affected areas and came back, distressed, to ask for food to be distributed. They waded through water and delivered food. They loaded and unloaded trucks and drove their vehicles to deliver. They heaved a sigh of relief when we announced that an ambulance had reached a woman in labour. They reached out to all their overseas friends’ parents and helped evacuate them. They smiled and joked through their tiredness and never failed to check reporting time for next day.

The cooks maintained an amazing quality of good throughout the ordeal. The volunteers packed and packed. An incredible pace was set. Every dispatch became a milestone to celebrate. The volunteers came in such large numbers that we set up a second kitchen to achieve the large requirement. We vowed to not turn down any request for food (although I did turn down a woman from a political party who demanded we supply for her division: I reasoned with her that priority was to send to the farthest and most affected point. I said we would visit and check her area out. She wanted to know how we were unwilling to give importance to this division. I said that we are citizens of Chennai and we have no divisions. Our volunteers calmly served her tea. After watching us work for a while, the group left.).

I am stunned, moved by the way that people came together, extraordinary feats of service, seeking no acknowledgement. People cooked for their neighbours and shared their homes. Large establishments opened their doors to the public. Individuals walked in to donate without even bothering to give their names. The anger and scepticism in me against the political class and the media faded into the background as I delighted in the people around me. People of Chennai, you are a class act!

Related read- What it's really like to deliver aid in a disaster zone

A Day in the Life

At four in the morning, the burners come alive and the cooks start another day. Two kitchens. By seven, the volunteers trickle in. The phone does not stop ringing, the requests start pouring in. Can we meet this volume?  A team starts flashing messages for more volunteers. Is it really a Sunday? Packing begins in earnest. We run out of stitched dry leaves. A volunteer takes charge and networks madly. Another runs to procure green banana leaves. A new process begins. They are cleaned and cut in size. A new assembly station is set up.

People walk in with newspapers, cars drive in with cardboard boxes. Finally, some good news: twenty thousand dried packing leaves have been sourced and will reach us in an hour. We multiply provision requirements. Suppliers are made to open up shops. Random calculations are made and ordered. A team chases up supplies while my warriors pack with single-minded devotion.

All of a sudden, the rains begin again. Volunteers squeeze under tents. Umbrellas and plastic sheets are used to cover packed food. They move swiftly to the dispatch team. I pray that they do not slip. But these kids are amazing, they adapt in minutes. The rains are no constraint. Being drenched seems normal. Cars and tempos arrive to pick up food in batches of 3000, 500, 2000 to Korattur, Pallikaranai, Tsunami Nagar. Names and quantities blur.

Volunteers ply raw materials to the second location where work is on at an unbelievable pace. Hundreds of bubbletops are filled with water for cooking and drinking. Prominent Carnatic artistes walk in. It is December after all! But they have a new stage. We dump supplies into their cars and they rush to deliver them. They load and unload with an easy rhythm. A breakfast counter is set up serving upma for the third day in a row. Hot tea is served. A cheer erupts: five thousand packed and delivered!

Soon, it resembles a war zone. Chlorine tabs all around to sanitise, volunteers pulled out for tetanus shots, everyone is making friends. Neighbours team up to cook food that arrives in large containers: ‘Can you please include these?’ they ask. Organisations cook food in their canteens and ask us to collect. All of a sudden, we discover that we have delivered twenty thousand packets.

The press walks in. ‘How did you put together this scale?’ they ask, and we have no answer. The senior gentleman and the ten-year-old girl continue through the day. A new small team of cooks arrive, we increase capacity. A strategic alliance is struck between the cooks. There are purchase teams, supply chains, logistics committees.

Calls pour in from Mylapore, cooks wanting to join this massive effort. Team leaders walk around urging people to make as large an individual packing as possible. Individuals feeding families around them are desperate for food packages to arrive, as their gas supplies at home have run out and they cannot let down people waiting for them. We cannot say no! 

We urge people calling in for small deliveries to get neighbourhood apartments to cook and pool. Numbers are tallied, stocks are reviewed. We realise we have delivered forty-five thousand! There’s mad cheering. The cooks are embarrassed with a standing ovation.

The final pick-up team fails to arrive. It is too late in the night to create alternate delivery. We are all feeling wretched about wasting food and the volunteers’ efforts. A call comes in from a distressed software professional having visited a slum where no food had gone. We ask her if she wants to come and take the packets now. This incredible couple arrives in their small car. The car becomes as large as their hearts as the food is piled in. They thank us with tears in their eyes. Meanwhile, our volunteers search on social media. A request pops up. Volunteers load the food in their vehicles. No one seems to be in a hurry to go home.

Scaling Up

The core team at Bhoomika begins a dual operation plan: rescue and rehabilitation. Overnight, a new control centre is created with all operations under one roof. We move into a large wedding hall. Volunteers furiously share the new venue details. There’s no time to analyse why requests are not coming down. As young professionals return to work, new volunteers arrive. Who are these young smart girls with clipped accent who effortlessly blend with a team of drivers and helpers, carrying boxes with ease and heading into suburbs? Chennai girls!

The water has still not drained in many parts of the city. More news of electrocution accidents trickles in. We are too numb to react. Stories and visuals of homes are shared. People experience the horror of returning to devastated homes. A lifetime’s accumulation of possessions stands destroyed. How can this new section of self-made middle-class individuals, which is not used to taking charity from anyone, come to terms with this reality? Heartbreaking!

Massive rehabilitation will have to begin. Let us now unite and create, let us question and demand, let us vow to not support this unimaginable level of plundering of our ecology and our resources for this thoughtless, mindless growth. Let us not forget the lessons learnt.

Read- Chennai Floods: The worst might be over, but keep diseases at bay with these health tips

The next phase

How does one know when to stop? How much is enough?

After seven days, we made the decision to close down our community kitchen, which was churning out thirty to forty thousand food packets a day. This was not based on any clear understanding of what was required at the ground level. We were told by the government that food would be provided to those still in relief centres.

The incredible number of volunteers who kept arriving at our centre cannot be categorised. I will only call them ‘people of Chennai’. No, even that is not correct. A group arrived from Kodaikanal to volunteer. Groups of expats from all over the world stood shoulder-to-shoulder and learnt to pack.Chennai’. No, even that is not correct. A group arrived from Kodaikanal to volunteer. Groups of expats from all over the world stood shoulder-to-shoulder and learnt to pack.

‘Let's get everybody back home, let's get them back to their vocation,’ is our new mantra.

A huge team is at work sorting and packing dry rations so that people rebuilding their homes have some basic necessities to start with. The process is complex, but our team, with its seven days of non-stop work experience, has a solution for everything: more work stations to make individual packs from large sacks; rice, dal, tamarind, spices, consolidated into a single pack; a human chain to move packed stuff from packing to storage!

Supplies of provisions are continuously being sourced. Trucks arrive and move out. Logistics of reaching out and delivering are being planned. Our planning team has now quit the conference room. Sleeves have been rolled up. Decisions are being made in minutes. Bringing in NGOs on the ground, small volunteer groups from different parts of the city, we are encouraging the adoption of smaller areas to help with outreach. The logistics are mindboggling.

We create a team of boys and girls in a devastated area on the banks of the Adyar River and bond them with a small team of our volunteers. They slip into easy camaraderie: ‘bro’ becomes ‘anna’. They huddle together to look at pictures of their now destroyed homes, listening to experiences. Our volunteers are determined to get them back home. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love you, young men and women of Chennai.

The larger reality hits us. All the tenements on the canal banks and riversides need to be resettled. These homes are already non-existent as we see small walls here and there, some flooring and no roofs. The destruction is total. I cannot even imagine the emotional trauma of losing a home, much less a forced relocation. We do not even know how all this is going to happen. Is the onus to be on our state government? There has been no news.

The more fortunate residents, the business people, walk into our relief centres, giving us stories of devastation near their homes. They are now emotionally connected with the neighbours they had never met before. These tenements have become their family as they have provided milk for the children, taken care of the old and the pregnant. We tell them to come back with the youth from these tenements, we promise to give them guidance and support.

In walks 2015 Magsaysay award winner Anshu Gupta of Goonj and our jaws drop! “You are doing outstanding work,” he tells us, “and I am here for you people.” They have organised truckloads of delivery material. More importantly, they have experience in working in devastated zones.

 It looks insurmountable, the challenge of cleaning up, building new homes, healing people and rescuing Chennai from greed.

But if there’s one thing I know, it’s this: we will overcome because Chennai cares.

Also read: I will never be the same after the Chennai Floods, says danseuse Anita Ratnam