The Madras Ark

”The Lord said to Noah there’s going to be a floody floody” thus began a song that The Man from Madras Musings learnt when he was a young cherub. He remembers singing it along with several other tiny tots even as a school marm played the piano. And the song came rather spontaneously to MMM’s mind the other day when it rained.

In the case of Noah, as MMM is sure most of his readers remember, the rain lasted forty days (fo-orty daisy daisy, as the song went for some reason) and everything became so muddy muddy (refrain – Children of the Lord). In Chennai, the rainwater, as you know, stagnates mainly in the plain. Not that there is much plain, what with the high plinths of multi-storey buildings, the deep excavations of the Metro rail, and the perennial road cuts done by the Electricity Department which in this regard is perpetually in a battle of one-upmanship with the Water Supply and Sewerage Board. Add to this the sand mounds created by construction activity and you have what geographers refer to as a land of high relief. No wonder the water charts its own course until evaporation removes it. And, so, at the end of the brief shower, everything was as muddy as in Noah’s time.

To get back to the rains – the animals in Noah’s time, if you recall another song, went in orderly rows of two by two, led by the elephant and the kangaroo. But the bipeds of Chennai chart their own rules. Never the most law-abiding when on the roads, they become firm adherents of laissez faire once it rains. To each one’s own, they declare, and rush in all directions. Suddenly lanes where everyone was going in three by three like the wasp, the ant and the bumblebee, becomes four by four resulting in a great hippopotamus getting stuck at the door, by which MMM alludes to those massive private vehicles referred to as SUVs which get by only on the power of their horn. Traffic snarls and accidents are the general result and it often makes MMM wonder as to why and how Chennai’s accident roster is not longer than what it is.

Father Noah, from what MMM remembers of yet another song from his (by which MMM alludes to his own and not Noah’s) childhood, settled down beneath the rainbow’s end. Later, MMM came to know that this meant Mount Ararat. The day it rained this was also perhaps what a minibus driver had on his mind. Having decided that he had to get to rainbow’s end as soon as possible, he raced over a flyover, shot over the boundary wall and landed his vehicle on the Metro rail construction below, from where it dangled for quite some time before a crane arrived to remove it. This  caused another traffic build up chiefly because this became one of the sights of the city, with every man and woman wanting to take a look. It was a wonder that the Corporation did not sell tickets for viewing the suspended vehicle from which all passengers luckily escaped unscathed.

A lady whom MMM knows was catching an international flight the day it rained. Having reached the airport she was informed that departure was delayed by at least five hours. She decided to summon her vehicle back so that she could go home and return at the appropriate time. But what with all the chaos caused by the bus and its shenanigans the vehicle took two hours to reach home. And once there, it was time to leave for the airport again! Such things happen only in Chennai. When the animals began going eight by eight, Noah, if MMM remembers correctly, worried that the weight was too great. The same situation prevails here – our city, like Noah’s ark, is bursting at it seams and only God can give us a way out of the present mess.

Water & sewage

The Man from Madras Musings often chuckles at the thought that water supply and sewage are combined in most Indian cities. Chennai is no exception and these onerous twin responsibilities are handled by the organisation that rejoices in the name of CMWSSB – Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board. Every once in a while, this organisation reminds us humble denizens that it takes care of both these liquid forms by mixing them up. And so it came about that early one morning MMM had just stepped into his bath along with his pet duck and other important accessories when he realised that all was not well with the bathwater. In simple words, it stank to the high heavens.

MMM and family then made enquiries among the neighbours, many of whom replied rather unconcernedly that they too had smelt the odour but what could be done? These were difficult times, said a couple of them, and we need to accept it. Not so, felt members of MMM’s household, and off went a couple of the more energetic ones to lodge a complaint. The concerned official, or, since we are referring to the Government here, shall we say appropriate authority (AA), was not in his seat and so the registering process took quite a while. But when it happened, the AA was not in the least perturbed. Such occurrences, the AA implied by his demeanour, were commonplace and scarcely merited a notice. If he had been Marcus Aurelius he may have added that the befalling of such an aught was a good thing and was meant to make us more spiritual. But to do him credit, he did not temporise but promised action. He also informed the complainant that the mixing of the water and the sewage had happened three days earlier and had since been detected and stopped.

Back home all this led to much emptying of water tank and sump and then the cleaning of both before (presumably) fresh and (supposedly) clean water was let in. A couple of relatives from abroad who call daily thanks to the proliferation of free channels of communication wanted to know if MMM could sue. The least that the AA could have done, they opined, was to inform all the residents of the locality as soon as the contamination occurred so that they could have taken suitable precautions. A good lawyer, they felt, could bring in a claim for substantial amounts on the grounds that MMM and neighbourhood had been exposed to the risk of cholera, typhoid and jaundice, not to mention glandular botts and a whole host of other illnesses.

MMM was tempted for a moment. Then he reflected on the number of years it may take for a judgement to be given and decided to abandon the idea.

Tailpiece

And so summer is here. The Man from Madras Musings notices that the city is divided into three camps. The first says it is the heat that it minds, and the second feels that the chief culprit is the humidity. But both agree that summer in Chennai is rarely otherwise. The third is a group that appears to have been taken by surprise by the advent of summer. It has cited the heat as the reason for calling off an event. Did they expect this year to be any different to the previous 375 years, MMM wonders.

-MMM