Girth of Mirth
By – Pamarty Venkataramana
The deluge. The chaos. The mayhem.
In the aftermath of a return to normalcy, one can afford to review as an auditor does, the various episodes which marred or marked rescue-operations.
The Kerala floods were a case-study not merely from accounting for the causes of a man-made disaster labelled as a ‘natural calamity’, but also to the many errors man continues to witness or participate in unwittingly. Providing witty moments. As an afterthought..!
There were these ‘stray’ cases of residents going ‘astray’ in all that cloudy weather. A gentleman in his lungi was walking towards the friendly neighbourhood chemist’s shop to purchase insulin for his father when he noticed a helicopter land in the nearby ground and was hailed by uniformed gents and in a rush of adrenaline, the lungi-clad man was ferried into the rescue-helicopter. In another part of ‘God’s-own-country’ facing the unprecedented dangerous situation, a couple were hailed and rescued in ‘as-is-where-is’ plight and the flight transported them to safe zone of the State-capital located a hundred kilometres away.Upon landing, they had to come out of the reverie and search frantically for a mobile phone with which to network with local friends of friends of friends of good Samaritans to get hold of cash to purchase bus tickets for their journey back to their home(that was close to the seas shore and therefore, not flooded).
On a different note, a lawyer-colleague who jumped into bandwagon of rescue and flood-relief operations and was distributing a huge carton of clothes, was taken aback when the gentleman he presented a new Bermuda wear said he wanted one of a different colour than the one handed over!
Not to mention the wily village commie head who discovered that a huge box of toothbrushes of a certain brand manufactured in 1980 (label neatly proclaims statutory-details) has decided to hold and hoard on to this prized ‘antique’-collection as a souvenir, for his great grandchildren.
To top it all were large consignments of neck ties received from the Gulf region in the hinterland of lungi-wear..!
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