Vision of Life; by Sanjay: Floods & Abhimanyus' of the Smart City!

“The further we are from the last disaster, the closer we are to the next.”… Daniel Silva

He has been called his generation’s finest writer of international intrigue and one of the greatest American spy novelists ever. Compelling, passionate, haunting, brilliant: these are the words that have been used to describe the work of award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva. And on 25^th Sept 19 night our Smart City proved the spy novelist right as the sky kept pouring down wrath & not just water but more than that the havoc which we witnessed due to the rains was of manmade negligence which was outcome of our careless or ignorant attitude towards not just the nature but our own life! And apart from the so called govt authorities (read depts’) which were supposed to act or take precaution as well the builders (I mean every that person who has build something) who were supposedly has throttled the nallahs or streams or natural water carrying channels, I will say even those who has lost their lives & life time savings they also somewhere responsible for this disaster!

Many won’t like my above statement as right now as usual social media, news media, politicians, govt, ngo’s, environmentalists & the common man (read citizens), all are busy in blaming the builders & entire system for the floods rains has caused & the damage made again mostly to so called innocent citizens! More than thirty people are dead & heart breaking stories how the dear ones of families have lost their live while trying to save the family members are surfacing. Rohit Aamle, a motherless boy, just fifteen years of age, died while he saved lives of his grand-mothers’ & there was a man who saved his one child but lost wife & another sibling in-front of his eyes while evacuating the home which has been flooded by nearby stream’s water! And there were two middle age highly qualified techies Salim Shaikh was manager in IT Company & his friend was studying CA, both got swept away with their car while crossing a bridge where water was flowing above the bridge surface level. And then there are thousands of cars & two wheelers in the basements of societies’, which are still submerged, causing millions of rupees damage to mostly middle class families residing in such buildings. And there are some miracle stories also where a middle age man got survived as his car too swept away by gushing water but could hold some bushes in the nallah & been rescued after spending three hours in darkness & water around! Though all were not so lucky & the life as well wealth damage list is increasing every day. Thousands of homes mostly of poor people as they were made of clay & tin are gone forever along with small vendor’s work shops or daily earning means also! At present even after five days of that disaster night, yet the final figures of damage haven’t been confirmed rather the rescue & search operation is on, such is the scene of the Smart City! And just three hours of the rains was the reason of all this disaster, great!

Indeed by now expert’s panels are being interviewed for the cause of such disaster & everybody will have his accounts settled by naming other entity (read as govt, builders, slums etc) & that analysis as well remedy will keep on rolling as usual with snail’s pace so I won’t waste mine or reader’s time with same stuff like natural water flow channels have been encroached, illegal structures to be demolished, flood lines to be marked, let the soil be exposed to absorb rain water i.e. stop concreting every sq inch of the city as nothing of this will stop, people will eventually forget all this & life will be normal, just the way it has been! What I want to put forward is look at the most incidences especially where the deaths has happened as well loss of house-hold things & automobiles, may it be on roads or in buildings, have you all not noticed something very vital which we all are missing? Well, the truth is, WE WERE NOT PREPERED FOR ANY SUCH DISASTER AS FLOODS, in first place, is that thing we are missing totally! And I am not referring about govt rather the fire brigade & police did exceptionally wonderful job with their limited resources, (that again is a part of our under preparation) & did their best to save lives as well wealth but I am referring to “we the citizens”! If we have forgotten (of-course we have forgotten) few years back floods caused by tsunami in Japan, then go to You Tube & watch the clips & look at the way people faced & responded disaster! It was superb display of discipline, maturity & determination to save life first & if possible then the wealth. And sorry to say the society which doesn’t follow simple rules of traffic such as wearing helmets & driving on right side of road, what else could have expected but chaos & panic, when the disaster like floods has hit them unguarded! Rather unguarded is the wrong term for us because we don’t know what is the guard in first place is an unfortunate fact! We didn’t know how to face a disaster “was, is & will” be the main reason which has made the tally of deaths so high & I won’t be amazed if it keeps increasing with every such disaster! As if we can’t stop a disaster then at least we must learn to face one with minimum damage, isn’t it?

Actually the death of that boy Rohit Amle is not outcome of floods but for the system which didn’t taught him what to do in such cases as the system is so ignorant (read arrogant fool) that it never thought that Rohit will ever encounter a situation where he will be needed to rescue his old & helpless grand-mother from flood water. All he knew was try to take her out of the water rushing in their home to some safe place but how to save him-self while doing so, no one has taught him! What else can be expected in a country which has history of sending a young dare-devil named Abhimanyu in a Chakrvuvha (formation of army) where he has been taught to get in but didn’t know how to get out of it & losing his life in the process! Rohit Amale is our Smart City’s Abhimanyua actually & so were most of even the grown-ups who has lost their lives in the flood! Salim Shaikh & his friend who got drowned away in the flood may have known driving & that friend was an avid cyclist, who has cycled across many terrains, but they both didn’t know this fact about water that even a feet high water when flowing with speed can topple a car & can be fatal to the car occupants! They thought their car can out power the flowing water & they were wrong, causing their mistake them their lives & leaving back sad family! The man who saved his one kid but lost wife & another kid due to collapse of his home’s wall didn’t knew this aspect of the flood, never wait till this late while evacuating in floods that the water level will rise to such height that it will make the walls of structure collapse on you causing death not by water but by debris of the structure which can be of your own homes! Same thing was with a civil contractor who waited in his car but right in the path of water channel & his mistake (read ignorance) caused him his life as the water swept away his car leaving him strangled in the car!

If this is about the deaths then the stories of thousands of vehicle owners who were lucky to survive as they abandoned their vehicles in time but forgot to tie them safely, are not different. They found their vehicles next day in totally damaged condition & miles away from the place where they have abandoned their two wheelers or cars as the water current has swept these vehicles far away & making far more damage than just submerging could have done. You check any car (leave two wheeler) & see how many of them has got basic things like nylon rope, hooks, flash light as well Axe type tools which are a must to face such disasters! I bait not a single car owner will be having this as the system which he has been bought up has told him just driving & never thought someday the car he is driving will got in water current & he will have to abandon the car! At the same time there has been many incidences on that night where two or four wheeler drivers been warned by the local volunteers for not to go ahead on the water clogged roads but in the rush of reaching back to their home the drivers ignored warnings & ended up risking not just vehicles but their lives too along! Again I don’t blame any of these drivers as none of them has been ever taught neither in schools or in colleges or in their daily chores about respecting such warnings about danger ahead in the time of disaster & act in disciplined manner! And then comes people who lost their vehicles parked under their buildings may it be parking or basements; yes they too were ignorant as nobody ever thought if the wall along the nallah their building has been build breaks how to drawn away the gushing water. No society has enough pumping system in place for the flooding neither any society has ever cared to check stability of their compound walls against flood water! Well, people will say was it not responsibility of the builder of the PMC to check so, well yes it was but whose vehicles got submerged now, builder’s or PMC’s? Guys you do insure your vehicle every year (thanks to the RTO rules or else I doubt how many of them would have got it done in first place), so why can’t you get done safety audits done of your buildings infrastructure against such floods or even fires!

Lastly about gallantry of fire dept & police-men who braved their lives & rescued every possible human being as well animals too! And do mind their bosses may be knowing the threats they face while the men braved but the super bosses seems to be ignorant, reluctant & careless or else they wouldn’t have left the fire dept in such bizarre situation of less man power as well infrastructure. We all watch in Hollywood movies where right from Helicopter every modern machinery gets in action in case of natural or manmade disasters & here leave helicopter, there were not even life jackets seen on the fire brigade jawan’s who were rescuing citizens! And still we are blaming mother nature for the disaster, just because she don’t blames us back but do mind, she replies in her own way which we call a new disaster, mind it Smart Citizens!

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

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https://youtu.be/g3lx1Nq7pBs

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http://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2018/08/pune-city-no-1.html