by Naturally the city broke with even basic facilities not available for everyone. Several houses washed away in the floods . Power, cell phone networks and drinking water was not available for quite a sizeable population across the city for almost 2-3 days. One could really step out of their house to venture anywhere as water levels in the roads were unprecedented.
With little media coverage initially, people had nowhere to go to seek help. Politicians and government officials were too busy fending for themselves and showed up only for media opportunities with very less intent to actually help people. This was when two individuals from the city began to seize control .
Noone would have even thought that such a feat achieved by these two people were possible. Helping a flood stricken city, sourcing thousands of relief materials from friends of friends in all nearby cities, organizing flood camps , organizing periodical meets to keep track of the flood situation , identifying areas and people who were in most need of basic relief materials . They were none other than RJ Balaji, a popular RJ/Comedian in movies and Siddharth, a very famous Bollywood/Kollywood actor
When everyone had the attitude of let me save myself, these two stood out, kept spreading their message through social media and began sourcing information about people who were in dire needs.They were one of the few ones who actually managed to go to different areas, helped thousands of people through their volunteer groups which they had formed. They setup emergency contact nos to reach out to them, offered to recharge mobiles for poor people
Rather than making flashy statements to the media about donating lakhs of rupees without getting their feet dirty like so many other politicians, these two actually made heads turn and proved a point.Their program was incidentally titled #ChennaiMicro. This trust acted as central powerhouse where people could donate whatever they could afford to and those funds were then distributed to the ones in need or relief materials esp food was bought to give it to different areas
Source: Siddharth's Twitter Profile | Image Courtesy: pluz mimg
The story of these two helping the people of Chennai when they most needed them could be one that could told hundreds of years later like freedom fighters. When you dont care about yourself but rather worry only about the city and its suffering people, that’s when you know you have encountered not just a good person but rather a great one
They proved the power of the youth brigade, breaking the myth that youth are merely wasting their time and having fun all the time. They proved that the youth of the nation is capable of greater things than anyone could even imagine , some of which even the government couldn’t do : Restore faith and humanity in people
Find below some of the snippets I managed to take out of their twitter handles and popular news outlets
