Give so others may live again! - By Rajeev Srinivasan

[Guest guest]

Give so others may live again!

By Rajeev Srinivasan

December 27, 2004

 

 

The terrible loss of life in peninsular India from the Christmas

quake and tsunami is a great human tragedy. My heart goes out to the

tens of thousands of Indians who have suffered loss of family, of

livelihood, and home and possessions. After the Republic Day

earthquake in Gujarat in 2001, I wrote a column What the Thunder

Said and I urged people to give. 'Datta!,' I said, echoing the

Upanishadic commandment.

 

'Quakes don't kill, human error does'

Today I say the same again. Give so that others may piece together

their damaged lives. All along the coast, Tamil Nadu, Andhra

Pradesh, Kerala, and the Andaman chain, thousands have died as an

unstoppable wall of water simply descended on them. We may never

know the true death toll, as many of the affected were marginal,

poverty-stricken coastal dwellers living in pathetic hovels. Entire

families may have been wiped out and nobody would know, as they are

outside the predatory state's purview.

 

Chennai was badly hit. Here are eyewitness accounts. A fisherman on

the Marina who had lost his meager possessions but escaped with his

life said: 'I don't know why God is testing us. It must be Kalikalam

(bad times). The Kanchi problem, and today, this.' An old woman who

lost a family member wailed, "We were so happy celebrating

Christmas, why did this happen?" Thousands of distraught people from

the desperately poor tenements were evacuated to safer ground,

fearing further after-shocks.

 

The scene of devastation was a wasteland: cars, boats, the remnants

of thatched huts, snack shanties on the beach, all floating like

toys in the floodwaters and jettisoned like so much flotsam and

jetsam in the wake of the receding water. Debris and sand everywhere

on the streets. Bodies still being discovered and carried in for

disposal. Especially tragic, the limp bodies of children being

brought in by grieving parents. There might be hundreds of bodies

washed out to sea, too.

 

In Kerala too, some areas I know, near Kollam where the backwaters

open up to the sea, as well as the area around Ambalapuzha where the

road is only a hundred yards from the water, have been devastated

with dozens of deaths.

 

We now know what happened. But the old woman's question haunted me.

Why this? There must be some reason not available to the mortal man.

Is there some pattern, as Thornton Wilder explored in The Bridge of

San Luis Rey?

 

A giant earthquake, of magnitude 8.1 on the Richter Scale, hit the

Macquarie Islands between Australia and Antarctica off of Tasmania

on Christmas Eve, December 24, at 2 am local time.

A gigantic earthquake, almost ten times more devastating at 8.9 on

the Richter Scale, and one of the most powerful ever recorded, hit

the coast of Sumatra on the day after Christmas, December 26, at 8

am local time.

 

The resulting tsunami rolled across the Bay of Bengal and the Indian

Ocean, hitting Sri Lanka, the Maldives, India and even Somalia all

the way on the other side of the sea.

 

The worst toll in India was in the state of Tamil Nadu, where

several thousand are missing and presumed dead. A tidal wave entered

the Velankanni church in Nagapattinam, the centre of a widespread

Madonna cult, and killed some 50 worshippers in the single most

devastating incident.

 

I am not the only one who noticed the timing. Indeed, according to

the ABC News story quoted above, Christianity's top cleric, the

Pope, said 'the enormous tragedy made for a sad Christmas.'

Is something supernatural happening?

 

I pooh-poohed one T John when he claimed that the Gujarat quake was

a sign from above, but now I am beginning to wonder.

The devastation by the tsunami in Tamil Nadu, could it be a caveat

from Up There about the atrocities being visited on the Kanchi

Acharya? About adharma gaining ground?

 

There are mysterious forces out there that are not fully understood

by our oh-so-rational selves. I am reminded of the strange signs and

omens that historians recorded before calamities: for instance the

rain of frogs in Vietnam preceding the cataclysmic war. Or the odd

celestial signs that preceded the death of Julius Caesar.

 

It is said that the very elements can be affected by the mystical

powers of sages who have acquired superhuman powers through

meditation and sadhana. I think we should all tread carefully, for

now we are treading on things we do not know.

 

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