TSUNAMI :-(

tsunami terror




On December 19th 2004, i sat watching a program called "Earthquake" on the History channel. The program featured some of the worst earthquakes in history. It featured the great quakes and fires of San Francisco of the early 1900's and the giant San Andrears fault quakes of the western coast of America in the later part of the century. The "featured" quake was the great quake of 1964 in Alaska. Though the quake was a powerful one, it wasnt the biggest killer. The true killer of the quake turned out to be the Tsunami's. The tsunami's struck even as the tremor was still shaking the ground. While i sat watching this, little did i know that the same force would strike closer to my heart a week from then.

The morning of December 26 was a lazy one. I was still drowsy from the previous night's food. When i switched on the TV, the SUN Network news reader was shouting out to someone. Unruly behavior for someone who was supposed to read news with sobriety. "Building shake aguthu" (the building is shaking). For an instant, my body froze. The broadcaster was sitting in Chennai, my home town. After making frantic phone calls to Chennai and confirming that nothing had happened to my brethern, i sat before the TV still not fully aware of what had happened. News reporters said that tremors had been recorded all over the eastern coast of South India and the Andaman Isles. A few minutes later BBC reported that a quake measuring 8.6 on the richter scale had been recorded somewhere in Indonesia. At this time there was no news of the Tsunami.

It was well into the evening that we came to know of the tsunamis. NDTV news reporters were scampering all over the place, trying to find out about the affected areas. And several presentations were made about what Tsunami's are. Afterall the last tsunami in India was a minor one and had occured in 1941. Then the death count started :-(

It started with news reporters telling that the number of dead were around 3000. This kept on increasing...at one point i felt that these people were making a mistake with the zero's. Unfortunately, this wasnt true. The whole of next day, all our inboxes were flooded with mails containing an assortment of photos, stories of terror and appeals to contribute towards the relief fund. I read through all of them.

That evening, we at Wilson Manor made an effort to collect clothes and an assortment of other things to contribute towards the relief effort. The children did a wonderful job of going to the 300 odd houses and collecting the stuff. And we tried to arrange and sort out the mass of clothes. There were some truly marvellous people who contributed without hesitation. And ofcourse there are some black sheeps who contributed things like used soaps, tooth brushes, torn shirts - as if this were a "bhogi". It was evident that these people were lazy to drop whatever they did not need in the dust bin and instead decided to drop it into the relief boxes. After cursing them enough, we started with the packing. The next day we sent two truck loads of material to the affected areas. I strongly feel that in times like these, we get to glimpse at the true mental maturity of people...

New Year's was spent listening to news about the growing death toll. And amidst the devastation, there were stories of hope and of recovery. Like the little child that was born blind. She got money for her eye operation, thanks to NDTV. Like the German mother of two in Pucketh who was forced to decide which child she had to let go as she waded the waves. A situation that no mother should ever face. The "abandoned" child survived, clinging to a door. The little angel of the sea who saved a whole village, thanks to her recollection about her social sciences classes about tsunami's following quakes. Truly, these are the incidents that make an atheist like me wonder if there really is GOD...

Cheers

Koushik

"Faith and Belief begin where Reasoning ends..."