Rain,Rain

I was sipping my hot cup of tea, standing in my balcony watching the rains in the morning, there was Water, water everywhere!

Every year, we face these rains with the water levels rising in the storage reservoirs and dams across the state.

The rains have lashed the state of Tamilnadu and Chennai, being the capital is no exception.

The main roads of the city get water logged and needless to say the state of the low-lying areas. Even though, the corporation does a major role in removing the water, I feel we still aren’t preparing ourselves enough to face the rains! This becomes every year’s story with all the places getting water logged and people are unable to move out of the houses. The most affected areas in the city are always Mount road, OMR, Koyambedu and TNagar where the traffic gets created due to the non-stop rains.

Being such a vast and efficient state, it is not impossible for us to tackle the rains. Just that it needs some planning. In a city like Chennai, where 9 months are summer and the remaining 3 months are rainy and cold, we can plan and execute in the summer months to face the rains. The source of rains for Chennai is either the north-east monsoon or the depression that gets formed in the Bay of Bengal.

Our city’s infrastructure has definitely improved which needs a standing ovation, no doubt! For example, normally it would have taken an hour’s time to reach Tambaram from OMR, now thanks to the fly-over at Pallavaram, the distance is reduced and we can reach in half the time!

The schools are given holiday to avoid unnecessary trouble for the kids and parents. Office-goers can’t take that excuse and so need to reach their respective destinations. What can be done if the residential areas are so full of water? Either the people take leave from work or swim against the water and reach their work-places.

Some of the IT companies give the work from home option. Though it is a welcoming move, if power gets cut at home due to rains, we can’t do anything! Either we should rush to office or take a day off!

Everywhere, there is chaos. All the buses and trains get delayed and you get wet somehow before you reach the workplace. Most of the offices give the liberty to the employees to start early to avoid any unpleasant happenings. Everywhere we can see rain coats and umbrellas! The cost of the vegetables, fruits go up due to the rains!

Water needs to be pumped out from the low lying areas and sub-ways and the poor people need shelter and food in the cold rains as they are evacuated. Some playgrounds and schools are used for this purpose.

During the summer months, we can raise the road levels and get the sewage corrected so that it doesn’t get mixed up with rain water and cause some diseases during the rainy seasons. The mosquitoes are a menace and even they need to be handled. Wherever water gets accumulated, it needs to be removed at the earliest. We need to connect our drainage systems properly so that the pumped out water is not lead on to the roads but sent to the underground drainage.

With the Metro rail being constructed, I wonder how the underground stations would be, if such rains pour in the future!

If the state capital faces these issues, it’s hard to imagine the plight of other cities and towns and villages in the state. Many of the agriculture crops get drowned in rains and the farmers want some compensation. If it takes 3-4 days to correct the issues in the state capital, it would take a minimum of 10 days to correct these in the other places. Some of the hill stations get disconnected due to land slips!

The Government schools in the villages and small towns would surely be under water and it would take a lot of time to get the kids back studying with the exams fast approaching.

We all should learn from the experiences. So many years and still we face the same issue with the rains! Why? Does it show that we are not learning to rectify from the repeating issues?

Lets all work together and bring up some solution and hopefully, next year’s rains would be surprised to see the state of Tamil nadu ready to welcome it.