At Mahabalipuram, 60 km south of Chennai, a rock-cut tableau known as “Lifting of the Mount Govardhan” depicts a deluge of epic proportions. As the story goes, Lord Indra was displeased with the people of Gokul. “I will shake the ground beneath your feet. Bring down rivers from the clouds that are under my command,” Indra thundered, and the skies shook with forked lighting.
Indra accused the people of neglecting the courtesies due to him. There were rules to keep the balance between earth and sky. The rules were ignored. In his rage to teach the people a lesson, Indra created a flood so dark it threatened to wipe out their lives and livelihood.
Of course, in the life-sized frieze at at the base of the mountain at Mahabalipuram, there is a saviour in the form of Krishna. He lifts a mountain with his left arm and, stretching his right arm, shelters all of nature with a mudra. Under the canopy stand men and women carrying their worldly belongings on their heads, a woman with a child, a cow licking its calf as a man kneels by its side to milk the cow. They hold their hands in supplication waiting for a deliverance from the floods.
Did the Pallava sculptors who carved the tableau in the 7th and 8th century AD have a message for us today? They made the images so realistic that they could well be reporting on the events of the last fortnight, with the rains and flooding crippling the city of Chennai.
The can-be spirit
Once again, the rules keeping the balance between earth and sky were disregarded.
Indra was displeased that the people had polluted his rivers with industrial waste. They had blasted granite quarries in his backyard. They had created huddled settlements in pockets that were reserved for water to flow in the month of Aadi, the season of rains. The Tamil month of Aadi Masam had been transformed into a grotesquery of sales and splurges on gold and silver.
On December 1, there was 208mm of rainfall in the city. In the next 24 hours, the volume doubled. There are four more days of rain to come.
In Chennai, Krishna takes the form of SR Ramanan, a newly enshrined hero – a meteorologist who serves as the director of the Cyclone Warning Centre. When he talks of the formation of a “low pressure in the bay” and the implications of a cold air mass meeting a warm air mass, people are reassured. He holds out deliverance by reading the weather forecast in easy-to-understand Tamil. Chennai may be drowning in thousands of cusecs of contaminated river water, but at least we know that Ramanan the Rain Man is watching over the process.
Other cities may boast of a can-do spirit. Chennai has a can-be spirit. It has accepted, for the moment, a calamity of unprecedented ferocity with a fortitude that is remarkable. The waters have swirled and flooded the railway tracks. Many southbound trains have stopped. Chennai’s domestic and international airports have shut down due to floodwaters on the runway.
The rivers Adyar and Cooum have risen to the brim and now threaten to overflow. Two of the main bridges across Adyar have been closed, isolating much of Chennai’s southern half.
Simply adjust, please
One of the city’s largest reservoirs, Chembarambakkam, which ran dry through the summer, has released 35,000 cusecs of water. No-one thought it necessary to deepen its base or strengthen its sides during the dry season. The once sluggish-as-an-earthworm Cooum has become a raging serpent. The crowds thronging to see it are causing it to weaken further.
“I don’t mind leaving my house, but what I can’t bear to leave behind is my TV,” explained a resident on the destroyed banks of the Cooum.
With the assistance of the Army, Navy and police, over 3,500 people have been relocated from the banks of the Adyar. Along the Cooum too there have been massive efforts to resettle the slum dwellers, with mixed results. Gangs of young men defied the calls to relocate and decided that they would play cricket in the rain. Only the women, children and the elderly agreed to take shelter in schools and municipal buildings. But even these are getting flooded. Animals are the worst affected. A fire engine was called in to evacuate four buffaloes living near Cooum. “I don’t know where they will spend the night,” said their owner. “Maybe in the police station.”
Chennai’s temples, mosques, churches and, surprisingly, some of its well-known malls and multiplexes have transformed into shelters during the deluge. Everyone wants to pitch in with food, clothes, shelter, however modest.
Then again, the rainy season is when Mariamman, Tamil Nadu’s goddess of the earth, is worshipped. She has bipolar traits. She is sometimes hailed as “Muthu Mariamman”, one who brings drops of pearl-like rain. At other places, she affects a fiery red complexion – and her devotees train themselves with austerities such as walking on beds of burning coal, or piercing their tongues and cheeks with tridents. Others take it upon themselves to feed milk to snakes hiding in earthen mounds, which they then smear upon themselves as a precaution against skin ailments.
Mariamman, in the old days, was also known as the goddess who had to be propitiated against smallpox. She may well have a new role to play once the onslaught of new-age diseases, such as dengue and leptospirosis, follow the floods.
Despite all the odds, Chennai is coping. It reminds of the the image of a cow taking shelter in an ATM kiosk for the night. We simply adjust.
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
Indra accused the people of neglecting the courtesies due to him. There were rules to keep the balance between earth and sky. The rules were ignored. In his rage to teach the people a lesson, Indra created a flood so dark it threatened to wipe out their lives and livelihood.
Of course, in the life-sized frieze at at the base of the mountain at Mahabalipuram, there is a saviour in the form of Krishna. He lifts a mountain with his left arm and, stretching his right arm, shelters all of nature with a mudra. Under the canopy stand men and women carrying their worldly belongings on their heads, a woman with a child, a cow licking its calf as a man kneels by its side to milk the cow. They hold their hands in supplication waiting for a deliverance from the floods.
Did the Pallava sculptors who carved the tableau in the 7th and 8th century AD have a message for us today? They made the images so realistic that they could well be reporting on the events of the last fortnight, with the rains and flooding crippling the city of Chennai.
The can-be spirit
Once again, the rules keeping the balance between earth and sky were disregarded.
Indra was displeased that the people had polluted his rivers with industrial waste. They had blasted granite quarries in his backyard. They had created huddled settlements in pockets that were reserved for water to flow in the month of Aadi, the season of rains. The Tamil month of Aadi Masam had been transformed into a grotesquery of sales and splurges on gold and silver.
On December 1, there was 208mm of rainfall in the city. In the next 24 hours, the volume doubled. There are four more days of rain to come.
In Chennai, Krishna takes the form of SR Ramanan, a newly enshrined hero – a meteorologist who serves as the director of the Cyclone Warning Centre. When he talks of the formation of a “low pressure in the bay” and the implications of a cold air mass meeting a warm air mass, people are reassured. He holds out deliverance by reading the weather forecast in easy-to-understand Tamil. Chennai may be drowning in thousands of cusecs of contaminated river water, but at least we know that Ramanan the Rain Man is watching over the process.
Other cities may boast of a can-do spirit. Chennai has a can-be spirit. It has accepted, for the moment, a calamity of unprecedented ferocity with a fortitude that is remarkable. The waters have swirled and flooded the railway tracks. Many southbound trains have stopped. Chennai’s domestic and international airports have shut down due to floodwaters on the runway.
The rivers Adyar and Cooum have risen to the brim and now threaten to overflow. Two of the main bridges across Adyar have been closed, isolating much of Chennai’s southern half.
Simply adjust, please
One of the city’s largest reservoirs, Chembarambakkam, which ran dry through the summer, has released 35,000 cusecs of water. No-one thought it necessary to deepen its base or strengthen its sides during the dry season. The once sluggish-as-an-earthworm Cooum has become a raging serpent. The crowds thronging to see it are causing it to weaken further.
“I don’t mind leaving my house, but what I can’t bear to leave behind is my TV,” explained a resident on the destroyed banks of the Cooum.
With the assistance of the Army, Navy and police, over 3,500 people have been relocated from the banks of the Adyar. Along the Cooum too there have been massive efforts to resettle the slum dwellers, with mixed results. Gangs of young men defied the calls to relocate and decided that they would play cricket in the rain. Only the women, children and the elderly agreed to take shelter in schools and municipal buildings. But even these are getting flooded. Animals are the worst affected. A fire engine was called in to evacuate four buffaloes living near Cooum. “I don’t know where they will spend the night,” said their owner. “Maybe in the police station.”
Chennai’s temples, mosques, churches and, surprisingly, some of its well-known malls and multiplexes have transformed into shelters during the deluge. Everyone wants to pitch in with food, clothes, shelter, however modest.
Then again, the rainy season is when Mariamman, Tamil Nadu’s goddess of the earth, is worshipped. She has bipolar traits. She is sometimes hailed as “Muthu Mariamman”, one who brings drops of pearl-like rain. At other places, she affects a fiery red complexion – and her devotees train themselves with austerities such as walking on beds of burning coal, or piercing their tongues and cheeks with tridents. Others take it upon themselves to feed milk to snakes hiding in earthen mounds, which they then smear upon themselves as a precaution against skin ailments.
Mariamman, in the old days, was also known as the goddess who had to be propitiated against smallpox. She may well have a new role to play once the onslaught of new-age diseases, such as dengue and leptospirosis, follow the floods.
Despite all the odds, Chennai is coping. It reminds of the the image of a cow taking shelter in an ATM kiosk for the night. We simply adjust.
