The Tamil film industry has imposed deafening silence on itself ever since Chennai started to witness furious floods earlier this week. Why the silence? A theory is that they fear angering the DMK government. If they speak out against the mismanagement on display, the DMK might take revenge when their movies come out in theatres.
Amid this, composer Santhosh Narayanan of Prabhas' 'Kalki 2898 AD' fame is an exception. He put out a long social media post exposing the state of affairs. "It has been 10+ continuous years of flooding with weeks of at least knee deep water and power cuts for at least 100 hours in our locality during every year. This is our harsh reality. This year is setting new benchmarks already. Funnily enough, it is neither historically a lake nor a 'low lying' area. We have loads of open land and more active ponds than any other area in Chennai, suitably named Kolapakkam," he wrote.
The composer, who is also doing 'Saindhav' in Telugu, further wrote, "Just pure negligence, mismanagement and greed has led to extreme dumping of rain water and sewage into just one irrigation canal that swells like a river every single time and has really hit our residents. Any ailment or medical emergency during these times is proving fatal. "
Columnist K Balakumar wrote that the 2015 floods and subsequent huge public suffering were more due to the Jayalalithaa government cataclysmically bungling with the Chembarambakkam water release. "To benchmark against such a disaster and feel good about its efforts is a low bar that the DMK government should avoid," he added.
