Random Ramblings of a Reluctant Blogger

Debunking myth and setting the record straight is not so easy after all. As I found out recently. Especially in these times of quick forwards and clickbait journalism. All it needs is a plausible explanation and a reliable sounding source. 

I fell hook, line and sinker for a facebook post that claimed in Chennai (Madras then) temperature dipped to -3 degree celsius in the month of April some 200 years ago. The report added that The Hindu reported the freak phenomenon was  caused by a volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in distant Indonesia. 

And soon I did what an ignorant whataspp, facebook forwarder does _ spread it across.

Afterall Chennai getting wintry is certainly a good news to spread, more so just to tell the world that winter can be Chennai’s too.

Post my good deed for the day, I started digging. You see, an empty mind is a writer’s workshop. And it made me think about how the spectacle might have been. How the people would have coped with it.  Never used to anything remotely similar, the warm clothes might never have been sufficient and heaters and other warming equipment would have been scarce, even if heard of. Life would have come to a standstill, not to mention reports of major casualties. I decided to look further.  

Thanks to Google, research is no longer physically exhausting. You need not move your derriere to go looking. And pretty soon I got what I had sought. Somebody at COMK (Chennaiyil Oru Mazhaikkaalam) the weather blogger had been probably thinking the same way and they decided to put the myth to swords. It said,   “For the people of Chennai it (the myth freeze) gave an opportunity to get back at all those who made fun of the Chennai heat… COMK was the only dissenting voice last year when we put this article  explaining how the circumstantial evidence indicated in the original Hindu Article should not be taken on face value.   But Alas in the madness of Chennai Freeze sane voice never gets the same bandwidth.  While last year we relied on circumstantial evidence ourselves to indicate the event may not have happened.  But this year’s much larger frenzy provoked us to double our efforts in understanding the truth.)

And doubled their efforts they certainly did to set the record straight. After extensive research and looking through various records, they proved that such a thing never happened, volcanic eruption or not. (Read the full report in https://www.chennairains.com/the-myth-of-chennai-freeze-at-3c-and-the-snow-that-never-happened/ | ChennaiRains (COMK).)

The romance of the winter thus ending, I very soon did my bit to spread the Truth. Though the myth had had a head start, the truth will soon catch up. Whether history repeats itself or not, whatsapp forwards certainly do and the next time around when the “Chennai Freeze” story reappears, I will be ready to unleash the truth.