The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : The old shiver, the young wait for food

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Friday, Dec 09, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

The old shiver, the young wait for food

Sandhya Soman

Flood-hit residents wait for normality to return Flood-hit residents wait for normality to return

CHENNAI: The old shivered in the cold, the young waited for food and those with the means had vegetables home-delivered by boats. Drying clothes and books keeps Raja occupied. The rest of the day he spends on Spurtank Road, wondering how and where to rebuild his house that has been partly submerged by the Cooum. That is when he is not thinking about food. "I have no money. I haven't been to work in the past one week," says this 30-year-old casual labourer, drying himself after wading through the water to bring back his children's textbooks.

Under the late afternoon sun, he keeps vigil with others near the body of his aged neighbour Kuppammal who passed away on Wednesday morning. "She had high fever. She was not able to bear the cold though the Corporation doctor gave her medicines," says Raja, who kept himself busy with funeral arrangements while waiting for the Corporation lorry supplying lunch.

Another aged neighbour of Raja lay shivering inside the Chetpet Middle School, where two classrooms have been providing shelter at night to the flood-affected along the Cooum. "We don't want to live here anymore. Give us some place and we will go," says Raja.

Kokilambal, 60, watches trains pass by instead of making upma at the balwadi behind the Chetpet Railway station. She would like to work but the balwadi has become a relief camp for those displaced from the nearby Bhoopathy Nagar.

A wall separates the balwadi building, Bhoopathy Nagar and Kokilambal's slum clearance board tenement from the brimming Choolai kulam. "I came here 20 years ago," she says recalling how the local governance and leaders built a wall, which runs parallel to the Chetpet railway track, to make space for tenements, balwadis and huts. Now the residents are caught between the water and the railway track. "I have nowhere to go. But if more water is drained into this kulam from Aminjikarai and even Pachaiyappa's College the wall might collapse," says Kokilambal peering into the water lapping against the wall.

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