{"id":12506,"date":"2011-07-24T07:02:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-24T11:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/?p=21117"},"modified":"2011-07-24T07:02:48","modified_gmt":"2011-07-24T11:02:48","slug":"flood-flashback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/2011\/07\/24\/flood-flashback\/","title":{"rendered":"Flood flashback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  <script type=\"text\/javascript\">var addthis_product='wpp-252';var addthis_options=\"Google+1\"<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js#pubid=kanglaonline\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Chitra Ahanthem<\/em><\/strong><br \/> The  rains it seems are good only in films. The languorous pitter-patter of  rains over the past week in Imphal has led to the inundation of small  lanes and many roads across town. On a happier note, the rains have not  spared anyone but merrily mired people in slush and mud, regardless of  social hierarchies and flooding embankments and residential areas and  office complexes. Whoever thought rain could turn out to be a great  social leveler? The rich and the powerful with all their might and the  grandeur of their homes have to face the ignominy of having their homes  encroached upon by water from nearby drains that in turn have become  mere slivers of water being clogged with plastic and other rubbish.  Drains have more or less disappeared from sight over the years following  the concrete jungle fixation, the greed for more land and the presence  of the evil plastic bags that everyone seems to love throwing  everywhere.<br \/> And  while nothing about floods can be romantic, the current situation of  flash floods arising out of water deluge following brief showers brings  back the memories of excitement associated with floods, and a big one at  that. The 1989 floods happened sometime in summer, which makes that  spectacle more than two decades old. We were in school then, a period  that was yet to be marked by internet or mobile phones or even cable TV.  Doordarshan and All India Radio were the only means of entertainment  and news but our own inherent tendency for kumhei meant that people would go out in droves and move about town taking stock of how the flood was advancing. They called it \u201ceeshing chaoba yengba\u201d \u00a0and  it was more or less effective in warning people about when to pack  things in the house and get ready for the flooding. Sometimes, people  would set up their fishing nets in places where there was flooding and  come back boasting about their catch. In most cases, it was the news  that came from this ventures that would warn people much before the  local news on AIR!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_21120\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 584px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/nude-wires-imphal-manipur.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-21120  \" title=\"Nude wires imphal manipur\" src=\"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/nude-wires-imphal-manipur-1024x680.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"574\" height=\"381\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nude wires over the Nambul river, plastic garbage in background Photo credit: Chitra Ahanthem<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Looking  at it now, it is rather strange that before my own experience of the  1989 floods, we had only the hearsay of our own parents of their flood  experiences during their own childhood. This gave it the rose tinted  outlook: floods sounded like so much fun! That would be an  understatement in more ways than one. For starters, my father ended up  joining his friends for a \u201ceeshing chaoba yengba chatba\u201d expedition  and it was while he was away that the floods decided to come calling!  As my younger siblings slept through the night, I was slogging with my  mother: we had to pack books and clothes and keep them on higher  locations inside the house. We had to wedge in bricks under the hen-coop  and repeat the same exercise for the small thatched granary that we had  at home. Father came in home after we had done the first stocktaking  and calmly said, \u201cthe floods have come.\u201d It was as if we still had that  fact to be pointed out to us when we had been already been scrambling  about with water swirling around our ankles in the house!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_21119\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 310px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Imphal-bazaar-flood.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-21119\" title=\"Scene in the heart of Imphal\" src=\"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/imphal-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scene in the heart of Imphal: Paona Bazaar. Photo credit: Chitra Ahanthem<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>But  that frantic rush as it turned out later, was not enough. My treasured  comic collection was sogged and so was a large part of the granary. My  younger brother who had been besotted by two small ducklings and had  them in a small cage was heart broken to find later that the waters  carried away the ducks: cage and all! Much later after the water  receded, the paddy that got wet developed white moulds but the price of  rice had gone up after the floods. So we ended up eating pungent  smelling rice for a long time and I pestered my parents asking whether  our paddy had turned to the huikap breed (it is said that huikap is so called because the taste  is so vile as to make even dogs cry!) because of the floods. This would  come later but after the scrambling, there was the element of fun that  started out with the first morning after the floods came: the sight of  an uncle and a cousin rowing on a raft made of the trunk of banana  plants. Of course, the lanes in our locality will no longer fit such a  contraption now but back then lanes within Leikais  were broad and people asked about the welfare of their neighbours.  Uncle was telling us that people had started packing their belongings  and taking shelter in his building and other tall structures. He sent in  a rickshaw to ferry my siblings and myself and we spent 3-4 days with  our extended family in their building, a tall one that was still being  constructed.<br \/> The  most vivid memory of that time is the picture of all of us surrounding  grand-father as he would tune into the local news on AIR and hearing  about when the flood level would go down. There was great excitement and  chaos when some snakes came out crawling and the usual circus following  naughty children trying out water adventures: the later got taken care  of through some trashing! But the fun times did not last long: we had  two doctors in the family and they promptly vaccinated all of us  children so we did not get any funny infections (am not sure what those  injections were about still). Then my maternal grand mother came to  fetch us to her home at Kakwa, which was not touched by the flood. I  stayed with her for 2 weeks till it was announced that schools would be  open once again. That brought the end of all excitement but the after  effects of the flood was still around when we got back. We came home to  the sight of our mother scrubbing the mud off the hens!<br \/> <strong>End-point:<\/strong><br \/> That  was then and much has changed. While there are many places around  Imphal and its outskirts that stay under flood for a day and more,  thankfully they do not remain submerged for days on end. Having said  that though, it would be disastrous to remain complacent about floods.  The sight of nude electric power lines and cables hanging oh so near  above the water surface on the Nambul river is enough to give me ulcers.  The flash floods that happen after every brief downpour also continues  to be an eye-sore and speaks volumes of how we are not taking care of  waste disposals and drainage and sewerage around our houses. Most houses  have got added height in their ground floor structures following ground  leveling but if each of us can care enough to also think of what lies  beyond our own homes, then we could actually get down to living without  the slush and the mud. So long as drains remain clogged with plastic or  worse, get to vanishing point, the sight of concrete surrounded by slush  will remain.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=93ac421a-e049-4815-b91f-61697f112b81\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~4\/RdToN5YZ9WA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">Read more \/ Original news source: <a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~3\/RdToN5YZ9WA\/\">http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~3\/RdToN5YZ9WA\/<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chitra Ahanthem The rains it seems are good only in films. The languorous pitter-patter of rains over the past week in Imphal has led to the inundation of small lanes&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/2011\/07\/flood-flashback\/\">Read more <span>&#187;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[602,80,603,604,74,32,43,605,330,606,607,608,609,610],"class_list":["post-12506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kanglaonline","category-news","tag-all-india-radio","tag-chitra-ahanthem","tag-earth-sciences","tag-flood","tag-footnotes-from-a-diary","tag-imphal","tag-k-featured","tag-kakwa","tag-kanglaonline-2","tag-manipur-flood","tag-natural-disasters-and-hazards","tag-past-floods","tag-rain","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12508,"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12506\/revisions\/12508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}