We were supposed to visit Subbu and have breakfast at his place. Prema was making my favorite Idiappam… it has almost become a tradition that whenever we are in Chennai, we visit Subbu’s place only on a Sunday and I get to eat Idiappam. But at 6.30 am today we realised our plan would not work as no taxis were plying !! We immediately remembered the 2015 Chennai floods….
Last night was similar to Diwali except louder, a sound and light show put up by nature. Would have been fun except for the memories of another time when waters from the Chembarampakkam reservoir had been released and Chennai was flooded ! Dec 1 and 2 – days 1&2 #TheChennaiRains.
I just spoke to Sri and folks in Pallavaram, Thiruneermalai etc are extremely worried as the Thiruneermalai lake is overflowing. Just praying that there is no breach :(. Ideally waters from the lake should’ve been released twice a year for the farmers, but apparently that hasn’t been done.
It was fascinating to see the number of restaurants delivering food dwindling to single digits as rains intensified. We do have enough stocks to manage for a few days. We were just checking Zomato and Swiggy as an alternate source of information about the water logging.
See the water logging in different parts of Chennai on this twitter feed –
Despite the fiasco in 2015 of late decisions and incompetent handling of the crisis by the then CM, not many lessons have been learnt. The use of plastic bags is still rampant and they continue to choke the drains. Very few grocery delivery websites have shifted to cloth bags. Every restaurant or vegetable vendor we visit immediately reaches out to a plastic bag. I continue to carry a cloth bag with me and get amused looks !
This time, the bull frogs are also making a loud noise. My mother initially thought it was some machine that was working throughout the night, but we soon realised its hundreds of bull frogs. The sound has become a part of the background noise and its loud.
I just read about the Indian bull frogs – Why the loud yellow Indian Bullfrog is a survivor. I didn’t realise that the bull frog legs were a delicacy in India 😞. If someone had said that they were a delicacy in China, its understandable but in a predominantly vegetarian country like ours exotic meats becoming a “delicacy” is worrisome.
The forecast for tomorrow seems to be better… lesser rains hopefully. We had to walk inside the house today. Hoping we can go out for a walk tomorrow. We also couldn’t meet some of our friends and family as planned. For the first time in many years, I managed to read for a couple of hours during the day. I usually read at night. Am currently reading “A God who hates” by Wafa Sultan. A very disturbing book as it is about her own difficult life.
Heavy rains lash Chennai, over 100mm of rainfall recorded in parts of city
#ChennaiRains
India is a predominantly non-vegetarian country @ 80%. Even Tamil Nadu is only 20% vegetarian and confined to the Brahmins and a few from other castes