The Greatest Natural Disaster to date..
I feel it apt to make a re-appearance in the blogging world with 2 particularly noteworthy entries. The first concerns the tsunami that has wreaked havoc across South and South-East Asia and the second, an event that equally impacted my little world, Velle's wedding! Since they're both so different in nature, i shall devote 2 whole different entries to them! i'm just introducing them both here coz I'm writing them both at the same sitting.
Waves of Destruction(courtesy NDTV, India)
On Sunday morning, at about 6.30am, Indian time, many of us in Chennai, India felt slight tremors that lasted approximately 7 seconds. My mother felt the book she was reading move, my dad felt the bed sway and Harish's dad thought he was getting dizzy coz the bathroom walls were moving. I, of course, in true me-fashion, slept right thru the tremors. How frustrating.
In a couple of hours, we got a call from one of mummy's friends who had driven down to Marina beach (pretty close to us...abt a ten min drive?) to check out the aftermath. She said that the sea-water had crossed the vast beach, the walkers' path, the 3 lane main road and invaded the buildings on the other side. A car was hanging precariously on a fence, people were thronging - both to hunt for and rescue victims and to gawk. It was utter mayhem.
People started calling us, one after another, to make sure that we hadn't been washed away by the tsunami, since we're living so close to the beach. Soon we learnt that thousands were dead as a result of the great tidal wave, just minutes from our home. Roads leading to the beach were shut, relief work was in progress. Hundreds of children who had been playing on the beach had lost their lives. Thousands of fishermen who had set out early in the morning were either dead or missing and believed dead. Many lost their homes. The story that went straight to my heart, however, was the news report of the little ones playing on the beach, who had clung to nearby bushes in an attempt to keep from being swept away, who looked at the towering tsunami and were literally scared to death. They were so frightened that their little hearts, unable to withstand the fright, just stopped. They went into immediate cardiac arrest.
In Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, 225 of the 500 bodies identified were that of little children. There, hundreds of children were orphaned in a matter of a couple of minutes, approximately 20,000 were rendered homeless, a mother who had painstakingly saved Rs. 20 000 for her blind six-month old baby's eye surgery watched as her money was washed away in seconds. The homeless of Nagapattinam don't even know where their next meal, their next drink of water is coming from.
In the Andaman & Nicobar islands, 7 000 are believed dead, thousands more are missing. The Indian Air Force base on Car Nicobar was partially flattened, hundreds of Air Force personnel are killed, many more and missing, believed dead. The Sub-Judiciary of Car Nicobar is dead. Survivors described each wave of the tsunami as "a slap which left in its wake, utter destruction" (courtesy NDTV, India). The waves were taller than the buildings and strong enough to flatten many houses.
Sri Lanka has a death toll of 18 000 to date, and this figure is expected to rise by many thousands more. A Sri Lankan train in Colombo was smashed by the ferocious waves. At least 1500 are believed to have died as a result of this.
The latest figure for the death toll in Indonesia has risen sharply over the past one day to reach a high of 19 000. This figure too is said to rise further.
162 dead to date in Kerala, over a 100 in Somalia, Africa, over 50 in Maldives, 1500 in Thailand and over 50 in Malaysia.
Over 47 000 dead in South and South-East Asia, to date. According to the UN, this is the greatest natural disaster in our history to date. Sri Lanka was declared a State of Emergeny yesterday.
Its strange, though. Only when I turn the tv on and watch the news, though, do I get the full sense of what's happening, although I'm currently in the thick of things, one could say. I am currently in Chennai, about a 10 min drive from Marina beach where disaster struck, early Sunday morning, killing thousands and yet, when I walk out of the house, everything seems normal. When I drive out into the city, all still seems normal. The maids tell us that their kids are scared, that their neighbours are paranoid that the tsunami will strike again. The driver tells me that on nearby Elliot's Beach (I can walk to this one) people are fighting because they've lost their homes and government officials haven't yet come to their aid. However, someone else tells me that Elliot's Beach wasn't even affected. Perhaps it's because I'm not right on the beach or in Nagapattinam, Kanyakumari or the Andaman & Nicobar Islands where everything's happening. Everything seems so surreal at the moment. Life, to me, is completely normal. And yet when I turn the tv on and tune into a news channel, Life seems totally upside-down, topsy-turvy.
All I can say is that I'm so glad that I'm not living in a shack on the beach and that everyone I know is safe.
One part of me feels sad for all the little kids who are now orphans and homeless, and for the parents who've lost their kids, homes and employment. But then a little voice pipes up in my head and says that well..the government did try and relocate them. These fisherfolk were given alternative accomodation off the beach, but they kept returning to their shacks, preferring to rent out their alternative accomodation and go back to their familiar slums. What can you do, if they insist on living in dangerous slums on the beach? Then again the other little voice argues that the government did that one step, but didn't take the further step of implementation. They didn't make it impossible for these people to return to their slums. They did their bit and then closed an eye. So who's fault is it, really? I'm not sure. I prefer to think of this whole episode as Nature's way of controlling the population explosion here in India. Seemingly cruel, but necessary, I feel. There are way too many people here. We're fast overtaking China. Calcutta alone has a population of 20 whopping million people!!!! Gosh.
Anyway, that's about all I have to say on the tsunami caused by the earthquake that happened off the shores of Indonesia early Sunday morning...a terrible disaster, a seemingly unnecessary loss of thousands of lives... but perhaps there is a reason behind the disaster....I just hope that the Indian government wakes up because of this and realises that it really needs to do something in terms of relocation, rural and urban planning and policy implementation. Some good must come of this terror.
My first close friend's married!!!!
CONGRATULATIONS, VELLE!
So one of my closest friends got married ten days back. I really really wanted to be there to witness it but I couldn't for a multitude of reasons.
It's a funny feeling when a close friend gets married. I mean I know I'll always feel as close to her, but somehow it's different...it's like you've lost a part of her already. Simply because she's married. I kinda felt a little like that when Manavi got married but that was different coz she's my sister, we have that blood-relation thing going and also I knew Anthony so well. Maybe I feel this way with Velle coz I've never met her Tony...
I'm still terribly terribly happy for her, but I can't help feeling like I've lost a part of a close friend...sigh. That's life I guess. One by one we'll all get married and leave our girlhoods behind and get on with the next chapter in the big book of Life.
At this point, i can't help but think back to the times I've spent with Velle, giggling over inconsequential things at the back of lecture theatres, painting our nails at the back of LTs (remember that, Velle? I think that was in Org Comm!!! That was probably the most productive thing we did in Org Comm too!!!), staying over at her place, doing the whole report for our Public Relations project, brainstorming over at my place with Sarah for the AXN project, the girls nite out we had..and so many many more times we spent together during and after mass comm. Oh and remember our Oppression dolls, Velle - I think that was the first time I spoke to you..oh and the Writing on the Wall...sigh. It all seems so long ago...and yet, when you look at the number of years we've known each other, it doesn't seem That long. And yet I feel like we know each other pretty well...
Life's strange, huh?
anyway, I'm so so happy for you, Velle and I hope that you'll be frightfully happy all thruout! I hope I get to meet you and your Tony sooooon! Oh and I want more pics soon! the ones on yr site were lovely, but I want normal sized ones..soooon!
Take care!
Gosh this post has suddenly turned into a letter to Velle! oh vell! hehe
