How the spirit of Chennai shone through amidst the flood fury

We joked about the Mumbai rains in 2005. We called those who panicked about going home old fuddy duddies. Then we stepped out of our offices in Lower Parel and walked through chest high water. It took us over four hours to cover about five kilometres. On the way, we were recipients of kindness by residents of the areas we passed. They handed out packets of biscuits, bread, bottles of water. We had no umbrellas, we were soaked through and rats floated alongside us. Mumbai in July 2005 was a nightmare I’ll never forget. No one will. But it also threw up something that’s become hard to define, but easily bandied about – the spirit of Mumbai.

No one really knows what it is, but the closest one can come to describe it would be to use the word resilience. The city was applauded for its grit and the fact that it was back on its feet in two days. I wondered what it was about Mumbai and its people that made them come together stronger than the rain that was battering them. I wondered if it was endemic to that city alone. In the last 48 hours, I have discovered it isn’t. Because I saw the same thing happen in Chennai – through the day, and all night long. 

People opened up their homes to strangers -- human and animal. They filled their online wallets with money and generously offered to recharge phone numbers. They made packets and packets of food to distribute to those stranded. In a sweet, infallible gush of innate goodness, people on Twitter came together to act as go-betweens for those who were stranded and those who were offering help in any form. The exact thing that happened in Mumbai, but ten times over, and twice as fast, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. 

This overflow of dignified, dedicated, almost bullish empathy I was seeing, made me cry, I’ll be honest. It made my spirit swell and it made my heart ache with a pain that I haven’t known in a long while. Friends and online acquaintances messaged me to say how their faith in humanity, something that this country has steadily been depleting in people I know, was restored. I am sure many others got similar messages from their friends and acquaintances. All it takes is one tragedy bigger than us, one calamity that threatens to defeat us completely before we reach deep, deep within for reserves of that unique thing that sets us apart and refuses to be beaten. It is also the very thing that makes us bay for each others’ blood when things don’t go our way on a normal, non-catastrophic day. If you don’t dwell on the definition of catastrophe too much, by the way.

At a time when the entire country is struggling to understand tolerance and intolerance, on days when most newspapers and TV news channels woke up to the flood in Chennai way too late, I am thankful for what I saw in the last 24 hours. Unadulterated, binding, even magical examples of humanity – the one thing an entire country pretends not to have. Empathy and humanity, things most of us fight day in and day out. Our own and others’; because being human and empathic makes us vulnerable. And you sure as hell don’t want to be that because how are you going to survive, then?

Well, turn to Chennai today and see how vulnerability has opened up homes to strangers, created relief volunteers when the system seemingly broke down (after a point helpline numbers were unreachable), found food, and even oxygen tanks for the ill. Then tell me letting yourself be vulnerable and wearing empathy on your sleeve is a bad thing.