image: Indian Express (link).
The annual festival of Onam which is observed most especially in the state of Kerala in India would have commenced on August 15 this year. However, the observance of the festival has been canceled this year due to devastating flooding.
I had been contacted some time before by a reader in Kerala who has been working on an article about the celestial connections of the annual Onam festival. That article has now of course been postponed.
The unprecedented flooding is the worst in at least a hundred years, and has already claimed over three hundred lives in Kerala, with more rains continuing to fall even now.
The rains are an annual feature of the monsoon season, but this past week they were so heavy that engineers at nearly all of the numerous dams in the area had to begin releasing water to prevent the dams from bursting altogether.
Readers may remember that the Oroville dam in northern California was letting off water from its spillway in the spring of 2017 when the spillway failed due to lack of necessary infrastructure spending, which is one of the signature characteristics of neoliberalism, privatization, and the siphoning-off of public resources to enrich private interests, discussed in previous blog posts such as:
Please pray for those in Kerala affected by the deadly flooding, and please let others know about the situation there, which does not appear to be receiving much media coverage at least where I live.
And, if you are moved to do so, please help the men, women and children of Kerala in any way you can (while at the same time being sure to look into the trustworthiness of any agency through which you choose to donate funds).
Let's do what we can to reach out and offer encouragement, prayers and assistance during this catastrophe.
image: Indian Express (link).
