Kollywood artistes turn real life heroes, distribute relief materials

Despite difficult situations, when houses of stars such as Siddharth, Kushboo, Vishal and Karthi were flooded, film actors were involved in tireless round-the-clock relief operations in various flood affected areas in the city and in Cuddalore and Nagapattinam.

Actors Vishal and Karthi along with a host of more than 50 actors, including Varalaxmi, Rohini, Aparna, Sanjay, Arya, Sangeetha, Sona and Shanthanu, cancelled their shootings and started their Rescue Chennai Group in WhatsApp setting up their base at Lady Andal School and have been involved in relief measures for the last seven days.

They walk through waist deep water with relief materials, including water bottles, food, clothes, blanket, milk powder, sanitary napkins, candles etc and distribute them to the victims. Medical camps have been setup at several places.

“Hundreds of volunteers are helping us in our endeavor. We have animal activists as well and saving many dogs and cattle every day”, says Vishal who is in Cuddalore. “Several NGOs from other parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, corporate houses and actors from other States including Rana, Navdeep, Nani etc with their Madras Mana Kosam initiative, have been sending truck loads of relief materials and all are also of immense help and everyone’s intention is to get Chennai back to normalcy,” says Karthi.

All actors are taking tetanus injections and drinking ‘nilavembu kudineer’ to protect themselves from infections. For six days Siddharth and RJ Balaji have gathered volunteers and participated in relief works with #ChennaiMicro created for this purpose.

Aadukalam actor Dhanush has been involved in relief work mobilising materials through his twitter. Actor turned politician Divya Spandhana has sent a truck load of relief materials from Bengaluru. A.R. Rahman, Parthiban and Ilayaraja are also involved in relief works.