While the less fortunate ones are simply using their palms, the ingenious ones used handkerchiefs, shirts, dupattas, pallus. No doubt the city is stinking, but not to the extent that people need to wear masks even while passing through the areas that remained unaffected from the flood.

Not only the masks, the city has also been forced to face a flood of politicians and political parties too. The Opposition parties have cropped up like mushrooms, but only with a bagful of allegations, holding the administration and the government responsible for everything, including ills passed on to this date from the time they were ruling.

They are of course paying for their adventures and misadventures as the affected are not differentiating between their present and past rulers and are treating all with same disdain. Their anger maybe unjustified but given the quantum of their sufferings they were expected to come up with unexpected.

Non-governmental organisations are doing an excellent job but are not getting their due, with their share of publicity being hijacked by the articulate majority.

The rumour mill is still busy churning out stories, lapped up by both credulous and the hardboiled ones. Some are taking the opportunity to settle old scores.

Meanwhile, even as Civic Chief S Jagadeesan today stated that all solid waste would be disposed off by Monday evening and that it would take about a week for the city to be restored to normalcy, SMC engineers and safai workers had a tough time with the residents of the Ved Road, Katargam, Rander, Adajan, Varachha and Kapodara areas of the city.

Despite the SMC staff removing trucks full of dirt from the main roads, people continued to pile up fresh debris on the roads, resulting in piles of dirt dotting the main roads once again.

Traders whose wares were affected in the flood, today used the dry conditions to put up discount sales outside their shops.