Chennai’s Tales Of Courage & Kindness Bring Succour To The Deluge-Hit City

The selfless ways of thousands of workers who rose to deal with the emergency created by a couple of days of extraordinary rainfall in Chennai came in for high praise. This was a redeeming feature of life as the Tamil Nadu capital was inundated incommoding the lives of lakhs of people. The one who stood out as thousands of relief workers toiled to take on the conditions rendered extremely difficult by the rain and water-logging was Police Inspector Rajeshwari. She saved a man in a cemetery who was injured by a falling tree by carrying him on her shoulder and running to the road to try and hire an auto rickshaw to ferry him to a government hospital. She became an internet sensation as her response to a situation beyond the call of duty was recorded on a mobile and made it nationally. Known to be committed to social service while working in the police force, she had been awarded medals for her dedication. There were also many a nameless worker who waded into the water to rescue people, handle electricity problems and outages, man row boats and dinghies to offer help to the stranded and strove to bring back a semblance of normalcy so people could manage to live through a city in the grip of a crisis caused by a natural disaster.