Articles by M Palani Kumar/PARI

“Don’t give us food packets, we can buy rice from the ration shop. Find a solution for the flood waters!” said the women gathered in a group in Semmanjeri. That area, 30 kilometres south of Chennai city, on the Old Mahabalipuram Road, in Kancheepuram district, was severely flooded on November 25, 2020. The submergence was neither new nor unusual for the residents of this low-lying locality. In 2015, when Chennai went under water in a historic and notoriously mismanaged flood, so did Semmanjeri. But in some neighbourhoods at least, the streets and storm water drains seemed to be somewhat better prepared…

Everything about Rita akka is a demonstration of what life strives to teach us – that it has a purpose. The physically challenged sanitation worker (she cannot hear or speak) is a widow, and her daughter, aged 17, has left home to be with her grandmother. The 42-year-old has loneliness writ large on her life, but won’t surrender to it. Every morning, Rita akka (elder sister) – as she is known in her neighbourhood (though some call her oomachi, a derogatory term for those with speaking disabilities) – wakes up and diligently goes about her garbage collection job with the Chennai Municipal Corporation. Sometimes though, she does…