Actress Keerthy Suresh recalled her horrendous experience during the recent Chennai floods which lashed out the city recently. She recalls,
“The picture you see below was the condition in my house during the flood! Water rose thigh level, coming from all directions. My experience during the flood with my family was something indescribable.
Scheduled for a surgery the next day, my grandmother was admitted at the MIOT hospital with my mom alone being a bystander, who was strictly restricted to take any food of any sort and denied the permission to have an extra bystander to take turns. Thus my uncle and granduncle had to return home. Within a few minutes of their arrival at home, rain poured and water level rose drastically and before we could realize what was happening water started getting inside the house and we were running around from room to room to secure important things. It was almost knee level, and they cut the electricity too. With the few hours of inverter power left, we gathered some food, clothes, whatever possible & left upstairs. Pitch dark upstairs, we settled down with candle lights. 2 days we were stuck in our house; it was an island. From our terrace we could see hundreds of people walking over the water to reach the metro nearby our house. It was sad to watch a mother carrying an infant, kids riding on the back of adults, elderly people walking carefully with walking stick. Never felt so helpless like this before. By nightfall, the networks started crashing and the last information that I got from my mother was that the surgery was called off because water had flooded in their generator room at the hospital. The next day, all of us managed to leave my house with the help of my colleague. Before we could even go to the hospital, my mom finally called up saying she reached to my neighbor’s place. Then I had to go back to pick them up. The minute I saw them is when I felt completely relaxed. It was terrible when they narrated what their situation was at the hospital. Two days there was no proper food. All they gave at the hospital was 5 biscuits and two glasses of milk and no water to the patient and my mom was starving. She walked outside the hospital to get something to eat and all that she got was some biscuits, chocolates and water bottles from the nearby shop. They later understood that it would not be possible to survive there anymore. Both grandmom and mom were brave enough to have decided to get out of the hospital and they did. They walked with water up to their chest level from MIOT till Porur junction which is around 2 kms away and took a taxi from there. I think it was god’s grace that the surgery didnt happen because if it had, then she would have been stuck in the ICU and the next day I freaked out when I read that 18 people died at the hospital. We then stayed at my colleague’s place for two days as no rooms were available in any of the hotels at that time and now we all are safe.”
