Life lessons for dummies - but, are we learning them?

In Chapter 6, verse 5 of the Bhagavat Gita Lord Krishna says, "you are your own best friend, and you are your own worst enemy". No words can summarise the Chennai disaster better.

Before getting into the length and depth of these holy words of wisdom, I want to share a story from my life first. 

Part 1 - My story

The year was 1991. The date, May 21st. Time, 11 ‘o’ clock in the night.

My mom and I were on a Tamil  Nadu State transport bus going from Bangalore (then) to Tirunelveli, my home town, to attend my cousin’s thread ceremony. Just as our bus was nearing Salem ( a city in Tamil Nadu) a bunch of hooligans (definitely politically motivated)  stopped the bus and asked all passengers to disembark. Thereafter, using the huge clubs they were carrying they went on to smash the vehicle’s  glass windows to smithereens.

The reason for their aggression: they were protesting  our ex Prime Minister, Shri Rajiv Gandhi’s brutal assassination, a few hours earlier, near Chennai! That, the mob felt, was as good a reason as any to vandalise public property and terrorise people!

Terrified at the turn of events,  we thankfully found ourselves put on another bus (which had also been vandalised) that promised to drop us at the Salem bus depot. On reaching the depot, we were left stranded with nowhere to go! We were also told that no buses would ply for another few days thus eliminating any chances of either proceeding with our journey or returning home.

Needless to add, those were times when there was no GPS, no mobile phones, hell, not even basic wired telephones (we didn't have a phone at home and did not even know my father’s office contact number). So, my mom and I were left clueless on how to get across the info on our whereabouts  to my father in Bangalore.  Worse still, how and where were we (and several other stranded women and kids) going to spend the night, attend to nature’s calls etc. for the next few days? (Again, in those days, it  was not common for women to take up lodging in a hotel without a male chaperone.)

Just as my mom (I was still in school then and of not much help to her) was trying to figure out the next course of action, a Salem resident named Gangadharan,  who happened to be at the bus stand at that hour, offered to take us women folk into his home till sanity was restored in the outside world.

Soon, my mom and I, along with three other families, found ourselves safely ensconced in his house, where we spent the next three days.

Super nice as Mr. Gangadharan’s family was to take in a bunch of complete strangers into their home, they were not in a position to feed us.

Then, help came from unexpected quarters….

Believe it or not, the  local auto rickshaw drivers (yes, the same rickshaw drivers who are frequently accused of fleecing customers) took it upon themselves  to feed us and all other passengers stranded in that area, three meals a day for the next three days. They pooled in their personal money to organise food for all of us. And feed us they did, royally too! I remember one rickshaw driver served
us all a dessert at the end of a meal while apologising to us that it was all that he could do, given his
limitations!!

And eat it we did, squatting on the bus stand ground, thankful for every morsel that we were served
and for our terrific luck even  in those trying times!

Finally, after  three days of ‘refugeedom’,  as things gradually returned to normalcy, my mom and I managed to board a bus back to Bangalore and returned home.

Nothing unusual about my story, though it does reiterate the fact that we humans are capable of swinging between both extremes - acts of valour, virtue and generosity (eg. Gangadharan’s family and the rickshaw drivers) and incredible acts of  brutality and irrationality (eg. Rajiv’s assassins and the hooligans). And, as a society we are eternally struggling to balance these brighter and darker sides of human nature. 

Whenever  there has been a calamity on a large scale, mankind has risen above its petty and base instincts to lend a helping hand to the 
needy, thus redeeming itself of its copious sins and restoring hope 
in humanity.  Call it our basic survival instincts or attribute it to the 'selfish gene', or hail it as the divine element in man, but it works when all else fails! 

This has been amply demonstrated in the recent Chennai floods.

Having said that, the rising hope in humanity is at once mitigated by the thought of human frailties and short-sightedness that have been and will be on display in Chennai in the aftermath of the floods.

Part 2 - Confessions of a myopic dummy

Enough has been said and written about how the Chennai floods were as much a man-made disaster as it was the result of nature's fury. Author Michael Crichton's words (in Jurassic Park) that the annihilation of a species is embedded in its own behaviour rings so chillingly true now!  Let me elaborate.

We are programmed not to remember…

Returning to my Salem story, while we were there, everybody around me talked endlessly of  how
they were going to go home and write to the media  (there was no social media then) about the
generosity of the Gangadharans and that of the local rickshaw drivers. None  of which, of course, ever happened!

As soon as we reached  home, we got busy just getting back to our routine lives! The episode was, I am sure, relived in the dinner conversations of our families, but only for a while. Eventually, all of us caught on with our lives,  and memories of those three days were gradually forgotten….

Well, I guess there's nothing strange about it.  It happens to us all the time. We human beings  are programmed to forget older  things so we can remember newer ones, mostly stuff we need for our everyday survival! (The good part of a short memory is that it also helps us overcome our personal grief, tragedies quickly.)

And the same thing is going to happen to Chennaites as well. Both the horrors of the past one month, the reasons for the catastrophe and the memorable deeds of heroism, mercy and nobility of their brethren that they were privy to, will slowly fade away from their minds as everyday challenges take them down….

Wait! I'm not saying the calamity would have no impact on anybody. I'm sure there are some of us
who are more sympathetic and empathetic than the others, those few of us for whom this event would
have definitely been ‘the’ catalyst for change.

But, unfortunately the vast majority of us are super inept at learning  or remembering the lessons life teaches us. It's simply beyond most of us!!

We are short-sighted and irrational....

So, much as we'd like to, let's not for a moment believe that the deadly deluge is going to pave the way for a huge social change in creating a borderless, casteless Utopia of our dreams in Chennai.  Oh heck, let's not even fool ourselves into believing that people will remember to dispose plastic responsibly henceforth.

And then there is an entire market for ‘bad/wasted’  land that the floods have thrown open, which is waiting to be exploited. Real estate prices in all the affected parts of Chennai have already slumped.
Land sharks waiting to grab lands will find this the most opportune time to do so.  They will buy now and will sell later when memories of people's sufferings have slowly dissipated from their minds. Meanwhile, with prices looking favourable, home owners looking at buying a house for investment will also find this an ideal time to invest. So, it is only a matter of time before Chennai’s real estate bounces back with a vengeance, and rampant construction  begin all over again.

Such a prognosis, outlandish as it may seem now, is based on  history. Since the cloudburst that poured 944 mm of rain in Mumbai in 24 hours on  July 26, 2005, realty prices in some of the worst affected areas of Mumbai have grown at a pace of 20 percent every year or nearly 6 times  over in  the last 10 years. Think about it!

So, don't be surprised if you find another large share of Chennai’s water channels remaining today
also give way to more skyscrapers  in another 10 years. After all, freak weather phenomena are known to happen only once a decade and if we are lucky, it may be another century before a similar
calamity strikes again.  And a century is a long time, even a decade is, from an investment point of
view. Whereas the investors, whether retail or otherwise, plan to stay invested only for a short time. Make your money and flee! And of course, there are also the genuine but naïve buyers, but they can be
easily conned into buying a house with just some clever marketing!

And so the city of Chennai or any other Indian  city will grow and grow insatiably till nature comes back to claim what is rightfully her’s! Unless….

We need the State to interfere

Unless...the government and administration take certain hard calls for the welfare of its citizens and does  not fall prey to petty politics and realising short term gains!

Individuals do not have the panoramic view that the state has. Individuals do not act rationally all the time.That's why we need a government, to see what you and I can't see, to think and act rationally for the larger common good!  Not for telling us what we must eat, wear or watch!

Can we citizens afford to repose such faith in our rulers? Will the State  rise up to meet these basic expectations of its people. Maybe, a little faith is all we can garner  in these trying times.

  In any case   it's time we shed our suicidal instincts, stopped fighting with ourselves and became our own good friends.....

Amen!