The Consul General who Swam and Saved Thousands

Many of the Maryborough Rotary members may remember Ravi from his visit to the club

It is not often that you see a Consul General swim in sewage infused flood waters to help more than a thousand stranded people! This is what Mr.Ravi Raman did. The Honorary Consul of Mauritius for South India and Managing Director of RR industries owns RR Towers in Guindy Industrial Estate,Chennai, which houses more than 40 IT and other companies including Wipro, Quadrant, Bharat Matrimony etc.

When rains battered and flooded Chennai, Ravi did not sit around and send financial aid or delegate rescue and relief for people in and around his towers whose lives were threatened. Instead, he took it upon himself to personally go, rescue and supervise all arrangements despite his buildings being under 12 feet of water. There were some 50 employees of his tenants plus his own maintenance staff who were stuck in his buildings RR Tower 3 and 4 and another 1000 from the neighbouring labourer’s colony whose houses were washed away in the floods, who needed immediate help. Ravi risked his life and drove till the point where he could, and parked his car and got into his swimming trunks to swim in the oily, mucky and highly contaminated water for almost a kilometer before he reached his building to assess the situation first hand. Ravi describes the experience “ The water was more than 8 feet deep and the currents were very strong. It took me more than an hour to reach the spot and it was not easy swimming for so long but I was determined to reach the people whose lives were at risk. On the way, I rested on cars which were submerged in water and swam along. I was shocked to see what lay in front of me; the area resembled a large lake, the entire basement was covered in water and the cars were submerged deep under. The nearby slums and houses of labourers were all under water”. Ravi has lived all his life in Chennai and says that he had never seen anything of this magnitude ever.